Here we all are at the end of 2016 which has proven to be a tumultuous year, indeed. And with the end of 2016, comes the end of an era. The Obama presidency. However, even though the voters of this great country have largely spoken by voting in a new president, house and senate that are largely composed of Republicans, Obama is unabashedly still at it.
While you were celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas and the end of his tenure, he’s been working with his cronies to cook up some very unpleasant gun control laws disguised as rules. In other words, knowing he cannot get the gun control or bans in place that he wants, he is working through the system to sneak these essentially 2A contradictions into the SSA and BATF.
On December 19, the SSA issued the final rule that will strip away the rights under 2A of recipients of SSI. Essentially, the SSA has determined that if you receive SSI, you will now be characterized as “mentally defective”. The White house put out a press statement in January of 2016 outlining their policy shift. You can read it here. While the SSA is essentially deciding that any mental health issue is immediately cause for the stripping of one’s 2A rights, when they were asked how that determination is being made, they simply referred to the BATF’s regulation that defines who they consider to be “mentally defective”. What Obama’s administration has done is roped the SSA into policing the ATF’s policies while not taking any action on their own to vet the actual mental illness of an individual to determine if he or she is a danger to themselves or society.
The rule does not allow one to argue against the removal of one’s rights prior to having them stripped. It happens, then you must persuade some entity that you should not have your rights stripped. In this country there is a requirement for due process under the constitution. The Fifth Amendment says that the Federal Government shall not, “be deprived of life, liberty or property without the due process of the law”. Further, the Fourteenth Amendment uses this same phrase, often described as the “due process” clause to describe these same limitations on a state level.
This, unfortunately, is not unique. Not too long ago, this same arbitrary rule was imposed on our veterans. To date, over 250,000 of our veterans have had their 2A rights stripped from them due to this overreaching rule. The Veterans Administration like, the SSA claims there is a path to having these rights restored. However, the costs associated with challenging this clearly unconstitutional rule begins at $10,000 and to be successful would likely exceed $50,000 to $100,000.
Overall, the Federal Government is finding ways to ban guns by squeezing down to demographic of people that can “legally” possess and carry a firearm. Despite the fact that the rules fly in the face of the constitution and are not put on the ballot for the people to vote on. More and more of this kind of subversive tactic will be used by the anti-gunners to get what they want.
I urge you to pay attention to this kind of subversive action, Get involved. Join the NRA, write and call your representatives. Remind them that this country is ruled by law, not “rules and regulations” that run counter to the Constitution.