http://www.latimes.com/la-bio-alan-zarembo-staff.html
LOS ANGELES TIMES
Obama pushes to extend gun background checks to Social
Security
By ALAN ZAREMBO
July 18, 2015
Seeking tighter controls over firearm purchases, the Obama administration is
pushing to ban Social Security beneficiaries from owning guns if they lack the
mental capacity to manage their own affairs, a move that could affect millions
whose monthly disability payments are handled by others.
The push is intended to bring the Social Security Administration in line with
laws regulating who gets reported to the National Instant Criminal
Background Check System, or NICS, which is used to prevent gun sales to
felons, drug addicts, immigrants in the country illegally and others.
A potentially large group within Social Security are people who, in the
language of federal gun laws, are unable to manage their own affairs due to
"marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition,
or disease."
There is no simple way to identify that group, but a strategy used by the
Department of Veterans Affairs since the creation of the background check
system is reporting anyone who has been declared incompetent to manage
pension or disability payments and assigned a fiduciary.
If Social Security, which has never participated in the background check
system, uses the same standard as the VA, millions of its beneficiaries would
be affected. About 4.2 million adults receive monthly benefits that are
managed by "representative payees."
The move is part of a concerted effort by the Obama administration after the
2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., to
strengthen gun control, including by plugging holes in the background check
system.
But critics — including gun rights activists, mental health experts and
advocates for the disabled — say that expanding the list of prohibited gun
owners based on financial competence is wrongheaded.
Though such a ban would keep at least some people who pose a danger to
themselves or others from owning guns, the strategy undoubtedly would also
include numerous people who may just have a bad memory or difficulty
balancing a checkbook, the critics argue.
"Someone can be incapable of managing their funds but not be dangerous,
violent or unsafe," said Dr. Marc Rosen, a Yale psychiatrist who has studied
how veterans with mental health problems manage their money. "They are
very different determinations."
Steven Overman, a 30-year-old former Marine who lives in Virginia, said his
case demonstrates the flaws of judging gun safety through financial
competence.
After his Humvee hit a roadside bomb in Iraq in 2007, he was diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder and a brain injury that weakened his memory
and cognitive ability.
The VA eventually deemed him 100% disabled and after reviewing his case in
2012 declared him incompetent, making his wife his fiduciary.
Upon being notified that he was being reported to the background check
system, he gave his guns to his mother and began working with a lawyer to get
them back.
Overman grew up hunting in Wisconsin. After his return from Iraq, he found
solace in target shooting. "It's relaxing to me," he said. "It's a break from dayto-day life. It calms me down."
Though his wife had managed their financial affairs since his deployment,
Overman said he has never felt like he was a danger to himself or others.
"I didn't know the VA could take away your guns," he said.
The background check system was created in 1993 by the Brady Handgun
Violence Prevention Act, named after White House Press Secretary James
Brady, who was partially paralyzed after being shot in the 1981 assassination
attempt on President Reagan.
The law requires gun stores to run the names of prospective buyers through
the computerized system before every sale.
The system's databases contain more than 13 million records, which include
the names of felons, immigrants in the U.S. illegally, fugitives, dishonorably
discharged service members, drug addicts and domestic abusers.
State agencies, local police and federal agencies are required to enter names
into the databases, but the system has been hampered by loopholes and
inconsistent reporting since its launch.
The shortcomings became clear in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech
shooting, in which Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people. Cho had been declared
mentally ill by a court and ordered to undergo outpatient treatment, but at the
time the law did not require that he be added to the databases.
Congress expanded the reporting requirements, but Social Security
determined it was not required to submit records, according to LaVenia
LaVelle, an agency spokeswoma
After 20-year-old Adam Lanza killed his mother, 20 children and six school
staffers in Newtown in 2012, President Obama vowed to make gun control a
central issue of his second term.
The effort fell flat. Congress ultimately rejected his proposals for new gun
control legislation.
But among 23 executive orders on the issue was one to the Department of
Justice to ensure that federal agencies were complying with the existing law on
reporting to the background check system.
One baseline for other agencies is the VA, which has been entering names into
the system since the beginning. About 177,000 veterans and survivors of
veterans are in the system, according to VA figures.
The VA reports names under a category in gun control regulations known as
"adjudicated as a mental defective," terminology that derives from decades-old
laws. Its only criterion is whether somebody has been appointed a fiduciary.
More than half of the names on the VA list are of people 80 or older, often
suffering from dementia, a reasonable criterion for prohibiting gun ownership.
But the category also includes anybody found by a "court, board, commission
or other lawful authority" to be lacking "the mental capacity to contract or
manage his own affairs" for a wide variety of reasons.
The agency's efforts have been criticized by a variety of groups.
Rosen, the Yale psychiatrist, said some veterans may avoid seeking help for
mental health problems out of fear that they would be required to give up their
guns.
Conservative groups have denounced the policy as an excuse to strip veterans
of their gun rights.
Republicans have introduced legislation in the last several sessions of
Congress to change the policy. The Veterans Second Amendment Protection
Act, now under consideration in the House, would require a court to
determine that somebody poses a danger before being reported to the
background check system.
Social Security would generally report names under the same "mental
defective" category. The agency is still figuring out how that definition should
be applied, LaVelle said.
About 2.7 million people are now receiving disability payments from Social
Security for mental health problems, a potentially higher risk category for gun
ownership. An addition 1.5 million have their finances handled by others for a
variety of reasons.
The agency has been drafting its policy outside of public view. Even the
National Rifle Assn. was unaware of it.
Told about the initiative, the NRA issued a statement from its chief lobbyist,
Chris W. Cox, saying: "If the Obama administration attempts to deny millions
of law-abiding citizens their constitutional rights by executive fiat, the NRA
stands ready to pursue all available avenues to stop them in their tracks."
Gun rights advocates are unlikely to be the only opponents.
Ari Ne'eman, a member of the National Council on Disability, said the
independent federal agency would oppose any policy that used assignment of
a representative payee as a basis to take any fundamental right from people
with disabilities.
"The rep payee is an extraordinarily broad brush," he said.
Since 2008, VA beneficiaries have been able to get off the list by filing an
appeal and demonstrating that they pose no danger to themselves or others.
But as of April, just nine of 298 appeals have been granted, according to data
provided by the VA. Thirteen others were pending, and 44 were withdrawn
after the VA overturned its determination of financial incompetence.
Overman is one of the few who decided to appeal.
He is irritable and antisocial, he said, but not dangerous. "I've never been
suicidal," he said. "To me that solves nothing."
More than a year and a half after Overman filed his challenge, the VA lifted its
incompetence ruling, allowing his removal from the background check system
before the VA ever had to determine whether he should be trusted with a gun.
Overman, who hasn't worked since leaving the military, said he and a friend
are now thinking of opening a gunsmith business.
alan.zarembo@latimes.com
Twitter: @AlanZarembo
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/opinion/columnists/nolan-finley/2015/07/22/finley-linkingguns-social-security/30478399/
Editor’s Note: Linking guns and Social Security
Nolan Finley, The Detroit News 12:13 a.m. EDT July 22, 2015
What’s Social Security got to do with gun control? The answer should be “nothing.” But
in this new all powerful government world President Barack Obama is building, it soon
may be “a lot.”
The White House is floating a proposal to force elderly citizens to either give up their
guns or their Social Security checks if they’re not capable of managing their own affairs,
according to a Los Angeles Times report.
The administration wants to bring Social Security under the background check system,
which denies gun ownership to those with mental issues, including reduced
competency. That could take in 4.2 million seniors who have turned over their financial
affairs to a third party.
A senior with memory problems or who is no longer up to handling the household
finances does not necessarily present a risk to misuse a gun. That senior may still need
self-defense.
It should be up to a court to decide whether an individual senior is at risk of harming
himself or others.
America’s workers and their employers pay into the Social Security system. The money
belongs to the beneficiary. It should not be leveraged by the government to coerce
behaviors. If allowed to start with gun control, there will soon be no end to the conditions
placed on collecting the benefit every American worker has funded and earned.
http://www.guns.com/2015/07/22/gop-lawmakers-move-to-block-social-security-gun-grab/
GOP lawmakers move to block Social Security gun grab
7/22/15 | by Chris Eger
Republicans in the House launched a two-pronged attack this week to derail a reported White
House plan to scrap the gun rights of up to 4.2 million on Social Security.
A plan detailed last week could see those who receive Social Security or SSI benefits and have a
representative payee assigned to handle their finances reported to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System, effectively making them
ineligible to possess firearms.
This has brought quick action from members of the House majority who have both penned a
cautionary letter to Carolyn Colvin, the acting commissioner of Social Security, and introduced
legislation to block such a move.
“Providing information on individuals who have a representative payee to the NICS is a broad
overreach of authority and violates beneficiaries’ constitutional rights,” reads the letter sent by
19 powerful House Republicans. “This policy runs counter to the aims of the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA) – the 25th anniversary of which we will celebrate this week – and would
stigmatize seniors and people with disabilities and isolate them from society at large.”
The lawmakers who penned the letter are Republicans on the House Ways and Means
Committee and Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., the chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on
Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies – in effect those in the
House who control the purse strings for the administration side of the SSA.
“Old age or a disability doesn’t make someone a threat to society,” continues the letter. “Having
a representative payee should not be grounds to revoke constitutional rights. We strongly urge
you to halt any steps to provide information on Social Security beneficiaries or Supplemental
Security Income recipients to the NICS.”
The letter met with fast support from the National Rifle Association, who have characterized the
possible move by SSA as, “the largest gun grab in history.”
Late Tuesday afternoon Chris W. Cox, executive director of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative
Action issued a statement lauding the effort by the House Republicans.
“The Obama administration will stop at nothing to strip as many people as possible of their
Second Amendment rights,” Cox said. “The NRA will employ all means available to prevent the
implementation of such a widespread injustice.”
Legislation introduced
Tuesday also saw a bill proposed by U.S. Rep. Ralph Abraham, R-La., that would prevent the
names of some SSA beneficiaries who are unable to manage their own affairs to the be
forwarded to the NICS.
Abraham’s measure, the Social Security Second Amendment Protection Act, would severely
limit any reporting requirement made by the SSA.
“President Obama will stop at nothing to take guns away from anyone he can,” Abraham said in
a statement. “My bill would reinstitute the rule of law and prevent bureaucrats in Washington
from deciding who can and cannot exercise their fundamental right to keep and bear arms. In this
nation, everyone is entitled to due process, and that includes those on Social Security.”
The bill would mandate that such reporting of SSA or SSI beneficiaries could only be
accomplished if a federal court has declared the individual mentally incompetent. This would
apply to cases such as a finding by an administrative law judge in a Social Security Office of
Disability Adjudication and Review hearing, but not for those who voluntarily set up
representative payees of their own accord.
Abraham, currently the chair of the House Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial
Affairs and a physician by trade, is expected to introduce the legislation this week.