NRA calls Obama’s sneaky new gun rule targeting disability recipients ’embarrassing and shameful’

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If you’re collecting Social Security disability payments, it’s possible you’ll fail a federal background check to purchase a gun.

The Social Security Administration has proposed a new rule in alignment with President Obama’s campaign to further restrict Americans’ access to firearms while avoiding the inconvenience of going through Congress.

The plan would lump certain disability recipients in with criminals and those deemed mentally defective and add them to the list provided to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, according to The Washington Free Beacon.

In January, Obama ordered the Social Security Administration to begin setting in place the process to implement the rule, which would deny Second Amendment rights to those recipients who receive benefits through a representative payee and meet certain additional criteria.

The Free Beacon reported:

That represents a significant retreat from the policy that was originally floated. It was first reported that the rule would mirror one implemented at the Veterans Administration, which affects all veterans with a representative payee.

Though Social Security’s rule limits the scope of those banned from owning firearms compared to the VA it would still potentially target a larger group of people. Tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans could be affected.

The Social Security administration lays out five specific criteria for recipients they plan to add to NICS. Those the agency plans to target must have filed a disability claim, been determined to be disabled because of a mental impairment, been officially diagnosed as mentally impaired, between the ages of 18 and 65, and have been assigned a representative payee because they were found by Social Security to be incapable of managing their benefit payments.

 

The rule is getting some serious pushback from gun rights groups.

“The Social Security Administration’s proposal doesn’t require an individual to be adjudicated mentally defective or to pose a risk to himself or others,” Lars Dalesiede, a NRA spokesman, said. “Instead they are set to strip away your constitutional rights just because you meet a set of criteria established by a group of faceless bureaucrats you’ll never meet. That puts thousands of Americans in the terrible position of choosing whether to pay their bills or give up their constitutional rights.”

The NRA called the proposed rule, which must first go through a 60-day public comment period, both “embarrassing and shameful.”

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WPTZ News clip via The Washington Free Beacon.

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