HR 2640.... "Veterans Disarmament Act"

[Jay]

I posted on en earlier thread that I would post any response I received from my inquiries into the ramifications of Hr 2640.

Here are the two questions I asked of Senator Richard Lugar from Indiana.......

Dear Senator Lugar,

RE: HR 2640 (NICS Improvement Bill)

I have two questions I'd like you to answer for me regarding this law:

1. How will this law affect the 2nd Amendment rights of a Veteran who has been diagnosed with PTSD, but has not been treated for it, nor has any adjudication occurred relative to his diagnosis, and he has no criminal history.
2. How will this law affect the 2nd Amendment rights of a Veteran who has been diagnosed and treated for PTSD but has has no adjudication relative to his diagnosis and treatment, and has no criminal history.

Your response, or lack of response will be posted on multiple pro-Second Amendment web sites.

I recieved his reply today, and here's a link to a scanned image of his letter.

http://personal.swayzee.com/jayb/hr2640.jpg

I'm not trying to start a riot here, but I said I would post any reply, and I got one, so here it is.

[Red Hat]

Thanks Jay for following up on our previous discussion about the new law. Senator Lugar confirms the research that you and I did after I started the original thread on this. Bottom line it will not affect anyone with PTSD unless confined in a mental institution or have been adjudicated with a mental problem associated with PTSD. In fact it remove several thousand veterans that were unfairly added to the NCIS database. NRA had it right all the time.

[MP3Mogul]

Yep, said this before, gonna say it again:

Stay far away from the VA!

[Jay]

sometimes it's best to remain silent and ............ well never mind.

[{TEX}Hawaii((]

Thanks for the info and posting the letter.

[Canis-Lupus]

I figured around 20-25% of the 1700 (or so) patrons of USA Carry must have served in a military uniform just by the way they post, the acronyms they use and the guns that they know so well that were or still are military issued, so about 4 months ago I started up a social group on USA Carry, Vets and Guns, a social group with 7 members as of yesterday that could address the unique Vet/gun issues that do not affect the civilians who make up the majority of this group. This is not a hard sell, it's another long post but at the end you make the choice of where this post belongs, in the 2nd Amendment open forum, or in the Vets and Guns social group. What follows I researched & sent to (D-WA) Senator Patty Murray's attention via e-mail last month, I will not post her (positive) reply but suffice to say that the key points of my e-mail to her WERE read out in the Senate for all present to hear. I have cut out personal data not suitable/needed for posting this huge post. If you are a Vet and think HR 2640 is going to be a good way to evaluate & treat our (massive) inbound disabled Vet population or those who have been in that status for decades then follow the links, do the math and tell me that a 50% rating for PTSD even controlled with total abstinence from booze, V.A. prescribed drugs like Xanax or quarterly 2-hour counseling sessions makes the PTSD affected disabled Vet even competent to own a gun, let alone pack one concealed. If U R one or know of a Vet who is, pass this along PLEASE then wait until they get that letter from their regional offices to report for a reevaluation Compensation & Pension board of every part of what is listed on the 'Findings' summation last sheet. That's right, not just PTSD will B re-looked & re-rated but so will EVERY ailment on their FINAL DECISION sheet will be re-examined using the new rating scheme that surfaced in FY 2007 and is entrenched by now world-wide. All part of the new package and then either keep your s/c rating for that illness by meeting the new criteria it rates you at and probably lose your 2nd if it's for PTSD, or keep your gun and meet a say 10% rating for PTSD, and stay under a tad more LEO scrutiny. Or get a LOT less V.A. disability $'s per month and get bumped down a level or 2 priority for care to maybe 3 from 2. But don't get pulled over with a few Valiums in your system after the toxicology report comes back and finds U were DUI, unless it meets exact therapeutic levels and that's a court decision that could get co$tly! U lose, then U lose your gun(s), license to drive, asta to your car, your CCW permit, pay a lawyer $2-4K to defend U or nothing for a PD who is not a Vet/gun/PTSD specialist in your crimes, pay a hefty fine and maybe do some jail time, if felony then it just gets Medieval. Am I starting to get through to you yet? Keep on reading then follow the link to the V.A. I posted before you slam out a hasty reply or look at the new functional levels of a 50% PTSD rated disabled Vet (the old GAF or Global Assessment Functioning test is gonzo!) and tell me that person who is "prone to anger, unstable, with some vivid flash-backs or with frequent thoughts of suicidal or homicidal ideation' even stands a chance of keeping both their rating and their gun. I am NOT trying to get new members for Vets and Guns, in fact I'd rather not work your Comp & Pen over the Internet or by a phone. What I do I do in the quiet relaxed atmosphere of my own home or by visiting local Vets who have a home where I can work with them undisturbed putting their packets together properly as I've already done about 500 times in the last 8 years and each one wears me out BAD. My time, effort, research and services are free. I don't play the American Legion or DAV volunteer VSO game of show up, drop off a stack of papers with no directions and ask for them back all filled-in like a Dr. & a lawyer wrote them up in a week, unrealistic and a waste of time as they will be denied, so work on an appeal or 4: "Call me when U R done" BS. I don't knock them though as they at least will give you what they gave me in 1997 and I had no help filling out the first 2 requests for Comp & Pen that came back nixed, so I went to every post service agency in Santa Rosa, CA and took all the advice they gave me, the 3 shot took a year to come back and just in time to keep me out of a financial nose-dive! I can not nor will I accept payment for what costs me in time, gas, paper, ink, stamps, phone bills into 3-figures and hundreds of hours per Vet to do what I do well because the questions I will ask them I must do face to face and they get very personal, and if U even smell of booze, got them glassy-pot-smoke eyes or lie to me just once I walk (I break federal law if I help U fudge a C & P anything!) and U go find a retired tanker or cook E7/VSO to work your case, a VSO who will probably chuck you a stack of paperwork and leave, because he/she has 30 more calls to make today and that's a 7 day a week job where your home life goes away. I don't & can not keep up that pace and do good work, I won't do 1/2-assed work with your future life depending upon my presentation, so I work 1 on 1 with select male only Vets. New to the V.A. comp & pen system female disabled Vets with me working their claims is a conflict of interests and a major moral no-go area. I know damn good free-lance female VSO's, all disabled Vets themselves, many ex-nurses/medics or medical who know the V.A. rules and the fancy medico-legal lingo well to bring in for the female disabled Vets, many still in their teens and their lives over before they even began. I find the Vets just chit-chatting in the waiting rooms in my local V.A. Medical Center a place I have to frequent much more than I'd like to but like I have a choice (IMHO, TRICARE is crap! A failed ex-CHAMPUS costly HMO for any military retirees who must retire close to a military base with a clinic for anything close to faster non-emergent care) these R nor 20-year seasoned warriors but 3-4 year young adults who were promised college and cash that doesn't kick-in until they have done a combat tour or 3 in the basic combat/combat-support tougher jobs, they are young or my age, sometimes even older & losing battles with many indifferent and (sometimes) rude & (always) over-worked/under-staffed V.A. staff who are supposed to be there to help them, but more often than not look at a new face as a waste of their valuable cantina/smoke-break time. Their faces tell me who are sinking fast, and I plonk my ass next to them and get to talking, that's how it starts and maybe a year later they get something better than a DD-214 and a few medals, a new start with some tangible medical and finacial rewards for their ver real sacrifices.
The very questions you don't seem to have much of an idea about are one of the main reasons why I put that Vets & Guns social group together on USA Carry. Right now there is a LOT more of me in there than I care to see, I rant and post but I could use some other informed minds to help if you can see yourself as an asset to the social group. No I can't run your case 2K miles away but I sure can point U in the right direction with the latest laws that the V.A. has adopted or coming close to making law. So the G2/links and current quotes/laws, HR's and bills that will be on the DC schedule I get from the V.A. and post service organizations (like Veterans Today or Cap-Wiz) posted for your benefit not mine. Please check out the Social Group 'Vets and Guns', or don't and leave this topic hanging out in 2nd Amendment Issues. Vets and Guns is full of my/American Legion, VFW, Disabled American Veterans and V.A. links to your questions, warnings about this VERY topic most not written by me but cut & pasted from the sources I get alerts from Cap-Wiz or Veterans Today delivered into my inbox daily for God's sake! For me this is how I still can serve this nation, not by fighting it's wars but by helping it's casualties @ a speed my Hep-C allows me to do well. There are thousands of illnesses and injuries a Vet can suffer from, the one that is slowly killing me is Hep-C. Forget Hep-C when or if you pull up PTSD on 'standards of fitness' vs. the disability award that bug no longer rates anything but a 0% nothing entry into my current rating even though it's the disease that will probably kill me by age 60, and tell me what you think about the levels of functioning a disabled Vet with a service-connected rating of 50% or even 30% for PTSD, in most States these poor sods wouldn't be trusted with a mop and broom, let alone a gun after the V.A. puts their 10-cents into an NIC check. And the V.A. has already made this U.S. wide, it may not be the determining factor yet but give it a year and PTSD Vets may not be gun owners. So all those state laws and regs are out when the V.A. asks for an NIC on a PTSD Vet and gets one fast! What follows is part of a letter that I sent to Senator Patty Murray (D/WA) also it's hard for any one I know personally to beat these kudos who is literally covering my 6: "Murray is a champion for Washington's 670,000 veterans. She is the daughter of a disabled World War II veteran, and today she is the first woman to serve on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. She brought the Veteran Affairs Secretary to Washington state for hearings on Gulf War Syndrome and has worked to improve health care access for veterans. Murray wrote the law that ensures all veterans can have military funeral honors. She has been honored for her work by the Vietnam Veterans of America, American Ex-POWs, the VFW, the Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs." http://murray.senate.gov/about/
There is a whole lot more she has done for disabled Vets and I don't care where she stands on guns, it's her help that keeps me alive not the weapons I own, hard to use a gun when U have no money for ammo and some BG's gives U a hand out because you R homeless, sitting in the Spokane snow and wearing an old torn-up 'Nam-era field jacket to stay warm, with your sign: '"1st Infantry Division Disabled Vet, Please Help Me because my country QUIT!) and they just jacked a 7/11 but gives U a $20 bill!

"Dear Senator Murray,
I do recommend you look up the signs and symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder which effects millions of disabled Veterans to find out what quality of life they have left, or if they are even still alive with 18 Vets checking out of life by suicide daily! VOTE NO ON THIS FARCE! Please look through what other non-medical trained Vets are asking you to vote YES to at this (V.A.) web-site and tell me it even makes sense to you. Compare these standards of disability to base-line AMA or WHO domestic & global modern medical state-of-the-art organizations and facilities established to rate & treat any patient suffering from any illness or injury. These are the best organizations that set the minimal medical standards with the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) tenants as the quality control federal agency who enforces compliance in the U.S. makes every civilian medical facility work as they should but seems to have no sway over the V.A. which pre-dates both yet treats it's patients like cattle. These are Draconian money savers conceived by the VDBC and IOM which promise fair evaluations to Vets but in fact make them almost unattainable.
Start here: http://www.warms.vba.va.gov/regs/38C...RT4/S4_130.DOC
Now navigate down to section 9411 Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Move down a bit to section 9440 and it tells you what equates a 100% rating to a 0% one for levels of functioning for Vets affected by PTSD. At 50% do you really think this Vet would or could act responsibly with a gun? At 70% this is (normally) a very confused and impulsive angry person who even sober with no mood-stabilizers on board would have a VERY hard time justifying even defending his/her home against an intruder who suddenly morphed from their beloved spouse who walked through the door into a muj in a flash-back, at 100% that Vet will probably use a gun in ways nothing close to lawful and meets the criteria for committal or long-term in & out-patient care!
Fellas I do these evaluations on a volunteer service as a free-lance/self-trained Veterans Service Officer. This is one of a very few areas I do very well in, and one of the reasons there is a social group called Vets and Guns on USA Carry, for fellow Vets because I know their laws since I 1st started with their hand-book 6-months after retirement in mid-1997 and have years of medical training prior to that to write on an application: "chronic tonic/clonic localized petit-mals, exacerbated by flashing lights or ETOH, secondary to a subdural hematoma caused by a concussive force equal to a grenade explosion in close proximity to the cerebral cortex", not "Has fits" (2 words that shows whoever wrote it didn't have a clue about the medical condition that made U disabled and your claim will probably be denied before it even gets it's 15 mins of a full hear-out!) so when I work a Vet through a Comp and Pen application I normally get a good and honest rating for the Vet first time thru, BFD right? I just gave them hope and hopefully a means to live off when they had none, so yes my reward is well worth the hug @ the end. What do you do for free to help your fellow man? If U do just one thing, selfless in nature then you are a moral good person civilian or Vet.
Don't blindly follow my words or boasts or BS, follow the links and read what the Department of Veterans Affairs has in store for those who came back in a lot worse shape than before they deployed to a country who is not prepared to even deal with 1/10th of what it currently has back-logged some for 2 years, or 5-8 on multiple appeals! Living off what, hand-outs & charity?
Oh and a new twist is at any time the V.A. sees fit they can and will call you back in for reevaluation using these new standards and you may have walked into a room with 8 suits sitting there looking stern with a 70% total and permanent (T&P) rating given to you 10 or 20 years ago, and leave found fit to find a job (yet MUCH sicker than when you got that 70% rating a younger healthier disabled Vet) with a life-destroying 10% rating. I do not like getting lied to, demeaned or minimalized by my Government nor the agency (V.A.) who is now in the business of rewriting the rules to exclude all but the most seriously ill or injured from any meaningful care, compensation or humanity. Those poor souls belong in hospital and do not make it well the day they are discharged with a 20% rating for anything.
I hate to write these words, but for many a swift death in combat @ age 18 may be preferable to a long 'life' of poverty, pain, misery and never-ending V.A. hospital visits, with disabilities that if they are not rated Total and Permanent @ 100% allowing them free care, it costs a mint if all they got was 30% and are now missing parts, but force that Vet to find a job where those disabilities will NOT make him of her competitive with their healthy peers, co-pays for everything then wait months for treatment/meds they never would have needed had they stayed home, not volunteered to go fight for personal or patriotic reasons, then woke up 1 day old, sicker, poor and still a janitor earning $8/hr for volunteering to go fight terror, when their (non-Vet) peers live in nice homes and enjoy good jobs in safe environments because Vets went to serve my nation and civilians stayed home and went to college, or at least started their lives with a better chance to watch it grow the more they put into it. Not an unpatriotic statement, just a sad fact of this very unpopular war from a disabled Vet who is still helping those this war busted-up.
Today (23Aug08) I added an entry to 'Vets and Guns', McCain promises, V.A. care for only those injured in COMBAT, the legions who got FUBAR in training he will give vouchers to for pay-for (Judas style) treatment at civilian hospitals only, worth a look see if U happen to be drawing a V.A. disability pay-check. I will not be posting to this thread as the answers are in Vets and Guns, or changing this post again.
My Regards to you,

Canis-Lupus

[tattedupboy]

Good Reply by Sen. Lugar; however, I wasn't aware that the Constitution gave the government the authority to abridge this right, for anyone on account of mental illness. True, I don't like the idea of people with multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia running around with guns, but making legislation to achieve that effect is not enough; the only way this can be accomplished properly is to amend the Constitution.

However, mentally ill people, much like criminals, even if this right is stripped away from them in this way, will not stop getting their hands on guns.

[Canis-Lupus]

FYI the V.A. works around the Constitution, or every Vet and their dependents would still get free health care for life at any V.A. facility, as it is written on the very enlistment papers I signed in early November 1976, just 3 weeks after arriving in this nation. Recruiter's lies! If U want to know about how badly us Vets got screwed by that BOGUS promise of free health care for life, it may have been one hell of a thread in the social group I moderate: Veterans and Guns, the part of USA Carry I spend a lot of time trying to keep accurate for our Vet/CCW patrons. But since you asked it here, follow this (PDF) link that explains it in lay-mans terms why many of my sickest M8's/Vets all are paying 1/2-3/4 of what they get per month for that 'free healthcare for life' BS line we bought into:
http://mrgrg-ms.org/swindle.ppt
My regards,

Canis-Lupus