A Social Security Gun Ban, Part 2?

A Social Security Gun Ban, Part 2?

Even though Congress repealed Obama’s Social Security Disability (SSI) gun ban in 2017, a bill in Congress would effectively take that principle and expand it to the broad range of entitlements — Social Security old age, Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, ObamaCare subsidies, etc.

Here’s how that would happen.

The Cornyn-Schumer-Feinstein-Blumenthal-Murphy legislation, S. 2135, would bribe the states and force federal agencies to send every possible eligible name to the national gun ban list, NICS.

This “Fix NICS” bill means that a whole lot of decent Americans (like seniors) are going to be added into the system.

Some people claim that S. 2135 — and its counterpart in the House — are really not that bad.  After all, they say, the bills don’t contain the words “traffic tickets,” “veterans,” “senior citizens,” and so forth.

But that’s the problem.  Legislators like Chuck Schumer are not going to tell you this up front. 

There’s more to it than just reading the bills

Remember the 2007 NICS Improvement Amendments Act that harmed so many veterans?  That legislation NEVER contained the word “veteran.”

But GOA knew what legislators were up to … we knew how veterans were going to be impacted … and so we renamed the legislation, more accurately, as the Veterans Disarmament Act.

Sadly, more than 257,000 veterans have now been disarmed, proving that GOA’s analysis of that disgraceful law was accurate.

The key is this:  You always have to read the legal code and the implementing regulations that are being amended by any particular piece of legislation.

Many gun owners don’t realize that NICS is already denying gun purchases to people who have medical marijuana cards

Or denying people who have unpaid traffic tickets — even though you won’t find the words “traffic” or “tickets” in the federal firearms code.

To read more about this, you’ll definitely want to see what a Massachusetts cop told GOA about how an unpaid traffic ticket can lead to a gun ban.

And you can click here to see Shannon Bream of Fox News quoting GOA to help viewers sift “fact from fiction” in December in regard to the Traffic Ticket Gun Ban.

Again, the reason Cornyn-Schumer is so horrible is that it bribes states and forces agencies to achieve 100% compliance with current statutes and regulations — and this is going to result in gun bans for lots of decent Americans whose names are not already in the NICS system.

Seniors at Risk under Fix NICS (S. 2135)

If you have a terrible — but unenforced — statute and you come along with legislation to mandate enforcement, is that a bad thing?

Obviously, it is.

And the unenforced statutes and regulations surrounding the 1968 Act (18 U.S.C. 922(g)), the 2007 Veterans Disarmament Act, and the regulations implementing them are so sucky that they, if fully enforced, would disarm millions — perhaps tens of millions — of decent Americans.

The Code of Federal Regulations disarms you if a “lawful authority” determines you are a “danger” or are unable to manage your checkbook (see 27 CFR 478.11).  “Lawful authority” means a psychiatrist who determines whether a person is eligible for federal benefits. Under these provisions, over 257,000 veterans have lost their guns.

And, in 2016, Barack Obama promulgated regulations which would trawl the SSI disability rolls to do the same for perhaps millions of people on disability.  Congress was shocked, the regulations were overturned at the start of the Trump administration.

But guess what?

The next anti-gun president could do the same with Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the children’s health insurance program, ObamaCare recipients, etc. 

It doesn’t matter that Congress repealed Obama’s Social Security Disability gun ban in 2017, using their Congressional Review Act (CRA) authority. Under the legal principle that the “later statute trumps the earlier statute, to the extent it is inconsistent,” the Cornyn-Schumer-Feinstein bill will clearly overturn any protections from the CRA resolution.

A future anti-gun president could add more Americans into NICS — sending the names of people with guardians, or people suffering from ADHD, PTSD, post partem depression, regular depression, OCD, or even Alzheimer’s, which currently affects upwards of 40 million people according to a study financed by the National Institutes of Health.  The latter would, no doubt, jeopardize the inheritance of many valuable gun collections.

And Congress would not be able to generate the 2/3 vote in both chambers to overturn the veto from the next anti-gun president.