Social Security Administration To Ban Guns For The "Mentally Ill"

by JASmius



In basketball, this is what is known as a "full-court press":

The Social Security Administration is proposing a new rule to block some people unable to work because of "mental health disorders" from buying guns – a move the NRA is bitterly opposing as a violation of their Second Amendment rights.

According to the Hill, the SSA plan to report people who get disability benefits and have a mental health condition to the FBI for background checks stems from a "memorandum" [i.e. imperial decree] Barack Obama issued in 2013.

Back we come to two principle factors.  The first is the definition of "mentally ill" and who gets to make that determination.  The answer to the latter is....the federal government.  Which immediately makes the former partisanly and ideologically suspect.  When the objective is to disarm the people in blanket violation of the Second Amendment, the feds will broaden the definition of "mental illness" as much as they possibly can to both strip Americans of their firearms and bar them from either getting them back or replacing them.

The second factor is due process.  If you're on SSI, and, in this case, the Social Security Administration makes the determination that you are "mentally ill" and therefore cannot purchase a gun or retain the one(s) you already have, do you get any say in the matter or the opportunity to make your case and defend yourself and challenge the SSA's ruling?

The answer is....no, you don't:

Similar efforts to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill by the [Commissaria]t of Veterans Affairs were criticized by Iowa GOP Senator Chuck Grassley, who claims 99% of the people the FBI prohibits from owning guns because they are considered “mentally defective” come from the VA, the Hill reports.

"It appears that just like the VA, SSA’s regulatory action will not require the government to first prove that the individual is a danger to self or others," Grassley wrote last July in a letter to Carolyn Colvin, acting commissioner of the SSA, the Hill reports. [emphasis added]

See?  "A danger to self and others" is a much tighter and taughter definition than "mentally ill," a huge tossed salad of categories that include "lack of financial acumen," sleep disorders, and "inflated self-esteem" (My God, the GOP has just nominated one of the latter to be f'ing president of the United States; no wonder he used the "I could shoot one of you right on Fifth Avenue and you'd still support me" metaphor).  Very few of those categories justify summary stripping of Second Amendment rights, and none of them merit stripping of  due process rights at the same time.

But this is another instance of the Constitution standing in the way of the Obamunist Agenda.  And whenever that happens, the Agenda always takes precedence.

You might even say it "trumps" all else.