In a the latest backdoor gun control effort put forward by the White House, President Obama is pushing to ban gun possession for Social Security beneficiaries who are incapable of handling their own finances.
The specific details of the ban are unknown, as it is being put together “outside of public view.” But the LA Times reports that a ban on gun possession due to inability to handle finances would be sweeping; that it would cover those who are unable to manage their own affairs for a multitude of reasons–from “subnormal intelligence or mental illness” to “incompetency,” an unspecified “condition,” or “disease.”
The Times notes that the finances of roughly “4.2 million” Social Security beneficiaries are handled by someone else.
Yale Psychologist Dr. Marc Rosen has seen this same tact used on US veterans and warns that those applying it to guns under the presumption that needing help with financial management equates to violent tendencies are simply mistaken. Rosen said, “Someone can be incapable of managing their funds but not be dangerous, violent or unsafe. They are very different determinations.”
The Times provides an example of 30-year-old US Marine Steve Overman. He requires help with his finances because of “weakened..memory and cognitive ability” resulting from a roadside bomb in Iraq. The “VA eventually deemed him 100% disabled and after reviewing his case in 2012 declared him incompetent, making his wife his fiduciary.”
Because of this, he had to get his guns out of his house–taking them a relative’s home–in order to avoid losing them. This same scenario could play out again–millions of times–if the Social Security Administration uses the “mental defective” categorization that the VA uses.
Under this one category alone, approximately “2.7 million” Social Security beneficiaries could lose gun rights.
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