gun rights
Playing Mind Games With the Second Amendment

Playing Mind Games With the Second Amendment

Is Obama using the federal gun law’s mental health prohibition to confiscate your guns? ...
Rebecca Terrell

Are you one of the more than 40 million Americans who suffer from depression or anxiety? If so, then hold on to your guns, because a trip to your doctor for relief could strip your constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

In typical Machiavellian fashion, President Barack Obama is using public safety as an excuse to violate federal law, pry into your personal medical records, and add your name to a federal database tracking individuals with diagnoses of mental illness. Obama originally announced his intent on January 16, 2013, when he signed 23 executive orders purportedly intended to curb gun violence. One of them aims to “address unnecessary legal barriers, particularly relating to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act [HIPAA], that may prevent states from making information available to the background check system.” Notice that the president regards your medical privacy rights as “unnecessary legal barriers.”

How does this affect your gun rights? Federal law contains a mental health prohibition, disqualifying certain people with psychiatric diagnoses from owning guns. The Federal Gun Control Act of 1968 forbids possession of firearms by anyone judged “as a mental defective,” and it vaguely defines that term as a person identified by “lawful authority” to be a danger to himself or others, or to be lacking in mental responsibility. The act allows government officials to rob “mental defectives” of their gun rights, which can only be restored by a long and costly court process.

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