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View Full Version : Social Security Admin Moves to Block Mentally Ill From Buying Guns



Elessar
05-06-2016, 11:33 AM
I am not sure this will float. It seems a broad-brushing "solution":

"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 National Rifle Association is bitterly opposing as a violation of their 2nd 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 President Barack Obama issued in 2013.


The rule is to appear in the Federal Register, The Hill reports.


Similar efforts to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill by the Department of Veterans Affairs were criticized by Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley, who claims 99 percent 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.


The NRA, in a statement last month, blasted the SSA rationale for the new rule, and called instead for "systemic changes to the federal laws concerning when mental illness results in a person being prohibited from possessing and receiving firearms."


The considerations broadly and unfairly target "any sort of mental condition" and whether an individual "can responsibly handle money."
"Financial acumen, even if related to an underlying issue with sleep disturbances or inflated self-esteem, has no necessary relationship to a propensity for violence, and it’s not a sufficient basis to strip persons of their inalienable right to self-defense," the NRA said.
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