Just because you get a little paranoid about them coming for your guns that doesn't mean they won't be coming for your guns. The Obama administration, reports the Los Angeles Times, wants to keep people collecting Social Security benefits from owning guns if it is determined they are unable to manage their own affairs, the Los Angeles Times reported. The push, which could potentially affect millions whose monthly disability payments are handled by others, is intended to bring the Social Security Administration in line with laws that prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, immigrants in the United States illegally, and others, according to the paper.
So the basic assumption here is that if you are a Social Security recipient (read: an old person) and someone else handles the receipt and disbursement of your benefits then you must be … what? Incompetent? On the list of disqualifiers being cited here that seems to be the only one which would come close to applying. And based on that – even if there’s never been any question raised about you and you’ve never been so much as accused of a crime – your constitutional rights would be suspended. Well, that certainly sounds fair, doesn’t it?
This sounds eerily similar to certain provisions of New York’s detestable SAFE Act, where large swaths of people are lumped together in a generalized category and then disarmed. In New York, anyone who has ever sought therapy or been issued a prescription drug for “depression” can find themselves on a similar list and are then faced with the daunting and expensive prospect of going to court to prove they are not crazy. In this case, one assumes that a senior citizen might be able to go to court and attempt to prove that they’re not incompetent, but how many Social Security recipients can afford that?
Yes, of course, that's outrageous, to not only make assumptions about a whole class but to slap them around with the law because of it. If you're disabled in some way, of course, you can't be trusted with a gun. If you've had therapy, you must be crazy. No Glock for you! But, hell, that's what these people do -- it's group think all the way. They are simply incapable of looking at individuals.
But the worst part is the sneaky, back-door way of taking away a constitutional right. When somebody gets old or depressed, guess what? They still have constitutional rights, including protection under the Second Amendment. Alas, we may be powerless.
But once again our hands may wind up being tied because the President is using a new interpretation of existing law and mining into a database completely unrelated to law enforcement to find a way to eliminate gun rights. Sounds to me like it would take a veto-proof act of Congress to modify the laws to prevent this and that’s unlikely to happen.
He's got his pend, and he's got his phone.
