Obama’s Newest Gun Control Scheme Involves
Social Security Benefits
The Obama administration has taken action to tie gun
ownership with Social Security benefits, expanding background
checks for firearms owners.
Obama was unable to push through stricter background check
laws for gun buyers through Congress in 2013, but through
executive action, the Social Security Administration could
threaten to cut off benefits by adding millions of people to the
National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), the
Los Angeles Times reported.
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.”
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.