Barack Obama’s legacy just took another direct hit from the GOP Senate, which blows a major hole in the left’s gun control agenda.
Last year Obama’s Social Security Administration created a rule that would designate tens of thousands on retirement benefits as ‘mentally defective’ and thus banned from firearms purchases.
But this week the Senate hit the delete button, and Trump will almost certainly sign it.
Here’s more from the NRA-ILA…
On Wednesday morning, the U.S. Senate voted 57-43 in favor of H.J.Res.40, which would block the implementation of an Obama-era rule under which the Social Security Administration (SSA) would report the names of tens of thousands of beneficiaries annually to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) in order to prohibit them from purchasing firearms. Under the Congressional Review Act, Congress is permitted to overrule a federal regulation, within a 60 day window, using an expedited legislative procedure that is not subject to the Senate’s filibuster rule. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed this measure by a vote of 235-180. This important legislation now heads to President Donald Trump.
At issue is a December 19, 2016 SSA rule, set to be implemented by December 19, 2017, that broadly prohibits many with what SSA considers to be a mental disorder from purchasing firearms. Under the rule, those with a mental health impairment, who meet SSA’s criteria to receive benefits and also have a representative payee designated to receive these benefits, would be reported to the NICS database as “adjudicated as a mental defective,” and thus prohibited from possessing firearms.
Mental health professionals recognize that there is no connection between mental illness and dangerousness, and that those who suffer from mental health disorders are more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violent crime. The SSA rule does not require that an individual’s underlying mental health records indicate dangerousness. In fact, an individual who is receiving benefits via a representative payee could be swept into NICS for mental conditions that span the gamut of diagnoses; including intellectual disabilities and eating disorders. The Obama administration estimated that this rule could strip the rights of 75,000 individuals per year.
The fact that this rule has no basis in evidence, would serve to further stigmatize an already vulnerable group, and has inadequate due process protections, has led a wide-ranging coalition of organizations to support its cancelation. In addition to the NRA, the legislation to block the SSA rule is supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Association of People with Disabilities, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, and many others.
