Social Security moves to block the mentally ill from purchasing guns

[montanajoe]

In my view the biggest threat to the 2nd Amendment is not Hilliary or Congress or the Supreme Court, it is the crazies getting guns and using them in copy cat mass shootings.

Although this proposal is by no means perfect it may keep a few crazies from getting a weapon.

I would remind folks to never tell any kind of health care provider you have weapons at home and if you have kids instruct them to never tell anyone at school you have weapons and especially if you have kids to make sure your weapons are safely secured.

Of course I don't have to worry as all my weapons were lost in an unfortunate boating accident years ago...

[mountaineer]

Of course I don't have to worry as all my weapons were lost in an unfortunate boating accident years ago...

Me too. They sank to the very bottom of the sea, alas.

[Springfield Reformer]

I have no problem with this. Nearly all the mass shooting are done by crazed individuals not responsible gun owners.

The problem is more complicated than that. First, you can't deprive someone of a constitutional right without due process. The SSA working with the FBI and the psychiatric community without judicial review is not due process.

Second, there are a lot of different mental illnesses, most of which do not create "crazed killers." Someone with a mild neurosis or a debilitating fear of spiders is mentally ill. An umbrella denial based on a generic diagnosis of mental illness would put the burden of proof on the citizen to show why he/she should be considered a safe gun owner. That's wrong. The burden should always be on the government, by due process, to show the gun owner has forfeited their constitutional right. That's a much tougher case to make, but it's the right way to go.

Third, there is no reliable connection between being a poor manager of one's financial affairs and having a mental illness that makes one a genuine danger to themselves or others.  So even if we just accepted the violation of the constitutional principles, we still have a "test" that is too broad to be effective in accomplishing it's stated purpose.

Fourth, overbroad laws are typically very easy to shoot down (pardon the metaphor) as invalid. But they are very good tools for social engineers who have no desire to honor due process, and wish to use the vagueness in the law as a weapon against their political enemies. In the Soviet Union you could be considered "mentally ill" for opposing the state. We're already hearing echos of that now, here. You might be mentally ill if you're one of those "anti-government" types, you know, like most conservatives who oppose leftist government policies.
 
So nope, while it would be great to reduce the risk of psychotics getting guns, there is an even greater risk that good people will be denied their constitutional rights at the whim of their political enemies. Given a choice between those two risks, I'm inclined to believe there is more harm in the latter than the former.

Peace,

SR

[A-Lert]

This is the key point.  These are disability benefits, and you can't get them unless you represent, under oath, that you are mentally disabled.  A fear of spiders, or some minor neuroses doesn't cut it.  It must rise to the level of an actual mental disability.  That seems a perfectly reasonable standard to me.

Now, the truth is that you have some people applying for SSA disability benefit who aren't actually disabled.  They're just scamming the system with the help of a good lawyer and compliant doc.  But hey, if they're going to represent that they're entitled to financial support from all the rest of us because of a "mental disability", then we're entitled to take them at their word.

Again, this is not something where it is possible to be targeted by "political enemies."  You have to actually represent that you're disabled.

 

[Springfield Reformer]

This is the key point.  These are disability benefits, and you can't get them unless you represent, under oath, that you are mentally disabled.  A fear of spiders, or some minor neuroses doesn't cut it.  It must rise to the level of an actual mental disability.  That seems a perfectly reasonable standard to me.

Now, the truth is that you have some people applying for SSA disability benefit who aren't actually disabled.  They're just scamming the system with the help of a good lawyer and compliant doc.  But hey, if they're going to represent that they're entitled to financial support from all the rest of us because of a "mental disability", then we're entitled to take them at their word.

Again, this is not something where it is possible to be targeted by "political enemies."  You have to actually represent that you're disabled. 

Actually, the definition of mental disability is broad enough to support anything that limits a major life activity. So you get a lawyer and work up evidence that your neurosis inhibits your ability to socialize, or your arachnophobia disrupts your ability to work. I know someone with a nasty case of arachnophobia.  There are jobs I would not want that person doing.  So they do have limitations the healthy person doesn't have. Then it gets down to a question of where they fall on a spectrum. That's all too loose and ill-defined to use as a basis for denying a constitutional right. If you can show the person has a history of harming themselves or others, then you have a case, but that is a very small subset of "mental disability." Most of the time a mental disability is a harmless individual trying to cope with a trauma or a disease.  They should not be denied a constitutional right without due process.
 
And it is incorrect to suggest that this cannot be used to target political enemies. Just because many  former military personnel have debilitating mental trauma from their battlefield experience, and therefore may have a genuine need for assistance, application for such assistance should NOT be presumed to be a forfeiture of a constitutional means of self defense. And given what we have learned through the IRS versus the Tea Party debacle, it is always at least possible for an activist government to use some lame excuse to suppress the rights of a particular group for some broader political purpose, so that option should never be off the table. Our constitutional government is grounded in a legitimate fear of the potential abuse of power of an unchecked government. That is why we have due process.  We need to keep that fear, and the due process that goes with it.  It is healthy and serves to keep us free.

Peace,

SR