This is one of my big concerns with dealing with the VA, Having some government hack arbitrarily deciding to deprive me of my 2nd amendment rights and having a stack show up at my door to confiscate my firearms thereby depriving me of my God given rights of self defense.
Key Senate lawmakers are once again pushing
legislation to stop veterans judged unable to handle their own finances
from being barred from owning firearms.
The bill, sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-NC, and Sen. Jim Webb,
D-Va., would require that veterans first are found to be a danger to
themselves or others before losing their Second Amendment rights. Today,
a veteran deemed by the Department of Veterans Affairs to be incapable
of handling his own finances is included on the FBI's National Instant
Criminal Background Check System, or NICS – which means he cannot own a
firearm, nor can anyone else in the household, Burr said.
"There are veterans, spouses, family members who are deprived of
their Second Amendment rights … based on an arbitrary decision by
somebody at VA because they can't handle their own personal finances,"
Burr said Wednesday at a committee hearing. "These people are labeled as
dangerous when it may be a physical disability that may not allow them
to handle their personal finances."
VA estimates that about 127,000 veterans have been put on the list
because the department determined they couldn't handle their personal
finances.
A similar bill has already passed the House of Representatives.
In the Senate, the "Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act" has
been filed at least three times before, going as far back as 2007. The
version filed in 2009 was opposed by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun
Violence, which argued that it could cause guns to wind up in the hands
of unsafe people.
The Brady Campaign had criticized Burr's legislation "in light of the
Fort Hood shootings." Attorneys for the accused attacker, Army Maj.
Nidal Hasan, claim he is mentally ill.
Burr's bill died in committee.
Burr, Webb and others backing the bill say no veteran should lose his
or her gun rights without an order by a judge, magistrate or other
judicial authority competent to make the call on whether the person is
dangerous.
At Wednesday's hearing, VA officials said that is not a determination
made by department officials who assess a veteran's ability to look
after his finances.
Tom Murphy, director of the Veterans Benefits Administration's
compensation service, said those who make the call on veterans are
trained only to assess how well they're able to handle finances.
Richard Hipolit, assistant general counsel for the VA, said, "Our
determination is just whether [someone] can handle financial affairs,
and that automatically triggers the requirement to refer their names" to
the NICS list
No comments:
Post a Comment
I had to change the comment format on this blog due to spammers, I will open it back up again in a bit.