Eternal Idol
Lono, "The Dog"
Originally posted by Surtur
And holy shit, STOP with the mentally ill stuff. It's getting old. *sigh* You and your pals continually mislead people about this. If a person has been deemed as a danger to themselves OR to others they cannot legally purchase a gun.
Under the Obama rule(that got repealed), information from the Social Security Administration regarding mental disability benefits would be added to the National Instant Criminal Background Check database for use in firearm background checks.
Even liberal rags like Vox have articles like this:
Why disabilities rights activists like me sided with the NRA on an Obama gun control rule
Mental illness is what conservative lawmakers are blaming for mass killings, yet they made it easier for them to obtain these firearms, and they are doing nothing to bring the costs of diagnosis and treatment.
It is getting old, but only because it's still the red herring being used by them to avoid any action whatsoever on current laws on gun sales, gun ownership, and lawful gun usage.
The opinion piece you reference is more about maintaining the rights of the mentally disabled and doing away the stigma of being unstable or incompetent than about gun rights alone. It doesn't change the inconsistent decisions made by conservative lawmakers.
I agree with it, to a certain extent. These are people who do have some type of mental illness, but do not necessarily exhibit violent behavior:
Disability advocates are concerned with setting the precedent that needing help with financial matters implies a lack of capacity to exercise other rights. These concerns are rooted in discrimination people with mental disabilities face in other areas of life, such as parenting and voting rights. On these issues, people with mental disabilities often face an assumption of incapacity, forcing disability and civil rights advocates and attorneys to fight to overturn assumptions that a diagnosis or determination of support need in one area should lead to a loss of rights in an unrelated area. Many of the same groups active in defending the voting and parenting rights of people with mental disabilities chose to weigh in against the Social Security rule for similar reasons; they feared that using the representative payee database for prohibiting gun purchases might constitute a “thin end of the wedge” for loss of more important rights down the road.