Obama Admin Coming After Guns Owned By Those On Social Security

by William Teach | July 20, 2015 7:46 am

I suppose it’s a lot easier coming after senior citizens than hardcore gangbangers, illegal aliens, and other criminals who illegally have and use firearms

(LA Times[1]) Seeking tighter controls over firearm purchases, the Obama administration is pushing to ban Social Security beneficiaries from owning guns if they lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs, a move that could affect millions whose monthly disability payments are handled by others.

The push is intended to bring the Social Security Administration in line with laws regulating who gets reported to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, which is used to prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, immigrants in the country illegally and others.

A potentially large group within Social Security are people who, in the language of federal gun laws, are unable to manage their own affairs due to “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.”

There is no simple way to identify that group, but a strategy used by the Department of Veterans Affairs since the creation of the background check system is reporting anyone who has been declared incompetent to manage pension or disability payments and assigned a fiduciary.

If Social Security, which has never participated in the background check system, uses the same standard as the VA, millions of its beneficiaries would be affected. About 4.2 million adults receive monthly benefits that are managed by “representative payees.”

It sure sounds like this will violate privacy and health records, eh?

But critics — including gun rights activists, mental health experts and advocates for the disabled — say that expanding the list of prohibited gun owners based on financial competence is wrongheaded.

Though such a ban would keep at least some people who pose a danger to themselves or others from owning guns, the strategy undoubtedly would also include numerous people who may just have a bad memory or difficulty balancing a checkbook, the critics argue.

“Someone can be incapable of managing their funds but not be dangerous, violent or unsafe,” said Dr. Marc Rosen, a Yale psychiatrist who has studied how veterans with mental health problems manage their money. “They are very different determinations.”

Well, hey now, Grandpa might want you off his lawn! This is the problem with the “gun control” debate from Leftists: they want to come after law abiding citizens, yet seem entirely afraid to go after those who are the actual problem. Which is no wonder, since so many of them reside in Liberal cities, and, really, are enabled by Democratic Party policies, which are soft on crime, soft on illegal aliens, and, let’s face it, enable Blacks, who are the major recipients of gun crimes, both those who shoot and those who are shot, in those liberal cities. People on Social Security are easy targets for the gun control.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove[2]. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach[3].

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/barack-obama/obama-admin-coming-after-guns-owned-by-those-on-social-security/

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