Two GOP lawmakers are working to understand why hundreds of thousands of veterans have been declared “mentally defective” and stripped of their 2nd Amendment rights.
The problem has to do with the Department of Veterans Affairs reporting veterans who have a fiduciary trustee—someone who handles financial issues on their behalf— to the National Instant Criminal Background Check system as potential dangers to society if they are allowed to own guns.
So far, the VA has reportedly declared some 260,381 veterans who have fiduciary trustees to the background check system as “mentally defective.”
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Johnny Isakson say the VA has essentially eliminated due process to strip the veterans of gun rights.
“Our military heroes risked their lives to protect and defend this country and all that we stand for, including our most basic constitutional rights,” said Grassley in a statement. “Now the very agency created to serve them is jeopardizing their Second Amendment rights through an erroneous reading of gun regulations. The VA’s careless approach to our veterans’ constitutional rights is disgraceful.”
In a letter to VA Secretary Robert McDonald, the two asked for clarification on the VA’s process of determining whether a service member is a danger.
“The use of the VA regulation, adopted for a totally unrelated purpose, is suspect, especially in light of the Supreme Court holding that the Second Amendment is a fundamental right,” they wrote. “That holding changed the legal calculus by which a regulatory scheme can survive constitutional scrutiny and it is not clear how these regulations would fare under that increased scrutiny.”
This isn’t the first time we’ve heard of such a scheme to strip gun rights from Americans within certain areas of the government’s reach.
In what the National Rifle Association has described as “the largest gun grab in history,” the Obama administration began working last year on a plan to deem ineligible for gun ownership as many as 4 million Americans who receive Social Security benefits through a “representative payee.”
More on that: Obama orders Social Security recipients under increased scrutiny for gun ownership
The post Lawmakers: VA is denying hundreds of thousands of veterans’ 2nd Amendment rights appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
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