If you need financial help managing your Social Security benefits, the agency might deem you mentally unfit to purchase a firearm. The Social Security administration is considering an adoption of a policy already in place at the Veteran's Administration, where people who have been assigned a "representative payee" have been permanently placed into the NICS background check system as ineligble to purchase a firearm. No due process. No hearing. No trial. A reminder of the Obama administration's latest back door gun control grab.
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.
Now, the NRA is backing legislation to protect the Second Amendment rights of Social Security recipients. The Social Security Beneficiary 2nd Amendment Rights Protection Act is sponsored by Texas Congressman Sam Johnson and would prevent the agency from placing those who need financial help into the gun background check system.
“People shouldn’t be forced to choose between their Social Security benefits and their constitutional right to self-protection. Congressman Johnson’s bill prevents the Obama Administration from denying Social Security recipients their Second Amendment rights just because they have a representative payee," NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox said in a statement about the legislation. "The Obama administration will stop at nothing to strip as many people as possible of their Second Amendment rights. The five million members of the NRA stand alongside Congressman Johnson in this fight to protect the children, parents, and grandparents who would fall victim to this back-door gun control scheme."
It is very important to point out the Obama administration has already placed thousands of veterans who have served the United States honorably on the NICS no-gun buy list as a result of their need for financial help with benefits they earned.
Protecting the Second Amendment rights of Social Security recipients is crucial and getting the Second Amendment rights of Veterans back is the next step.
