Norman
Olney
Director
Floyd Brown
Director
Randy Goodwin
Director
Michael Connelly
Executive
Director
|
July
5, 2016
NICS Comments
Social Security
Administration
3100 West High
Rise Building
6401 Security
Boulevard
Baltimore,
Maryland 21235-6401
Re: United States Justice Foundation Comments
to the
Social Security
Administration on: “Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of
2007”
Federal
Register, Vol. 81, No. 87 (May 5, 2016)
Dear Sirs:
These Comments of the United States
Justice Foundation are filed in response to the Social Security
Administration’s above-referenced Proposed Rulemaking regarding “Implementation
of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007.”
The United States Justice Foundation
(“USJF”), located in Ramona, California, is a legal defense and educational
organization, founded in 1979. More
information about USJF can be found at www.usjf.net.
For several years, attorneys for the
United States Justice Foundation (USJF) have been assisting military veterans
and their families in defending themselves against the Veterans Administration
program under which bureaucrats arbitrarily declare many veterans to be incompetent
to handle their own financial affairs, often in the context of awarding
disability benefits.
After the VA determines that a
veteran is entitled to disability benefits, the VA often will appoint a
fiduciary to handle the veteran’s benefits and the fiduciary receives a fee
paid by the veteran. The declaration of
incompetence and appointment of a fiduciary is then followed by the the VA placing
of the veteran on the FBI’s NICS list of those individuals prohibited from
legally purchasing a firearm, based on the VA’s theory that he has been
“adjudicated as a mental defective.”
USJF has raised serious
constitutional issues with this procedure, because first and foremost, it infringes
on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms of these Veterans who
served honorably, and does so without any legitimate due process being given to
these veterans.
Before their Second Amendment rights
are unilaterally taken from then by bureaucratic action, the veterans receive a
letter from the VA informing them that the VA is considering declaring them
incompetent due to physical or mental disabilities. These disabilities are often not delineated in
the original letter, and the veterans are instructed, erroneously, that the
burden of proof is on them to prove that they are competent. USJF maintains that this effort to shift the government’s
duty to show sufficient predicate for the loss of constitutional rights to the
veteran constitutes a violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Further, USJF has evidence in
writing that some veterans are being declared incompetent because of minor
PTSD, minor depression, and other such conditions, allowing their spouses to
pay the family bills, or even having their monthly bills paid automatically by
the bank. None of these so-called
“disabilities” appear to be grounds for being declared incompetent, much less
put on the NICS list under the category of being a mental defective.
Nevertheless, thousands of veterans
are on the NICS list as persons prohibited from owning firearms, despite the
fact that there has been no formal adjudication by any “lawful authority” —
much less any court — that these veterans are, in fact, mentally defective. The
VA has decided that virtually any employee of the VA — including unqualified, ill
trained and badly supervised independent contractors — is a “lawful authority”
that can adjudicate the mental competency of veterans. As a result, the Senate Judiciary Committee,
chaired by Senator Charles Grassley has found that a staggering 99.3 per cent
of the people on NICS under the category of being mentally defective are
veterans.
Most of these veterans have never
been examined by a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or even in some cases even a
physician. Yet, they have been classified for life as being mentally defective,
and once again the burden of proof is on them to prove they don’t belong on
NICS. This deprivation of constitutional rights constitutes an abuse of the NICS
system and the Constitution.
Now, SSA is proposing to apply this
same illegal and unconstitutional process to tens of thousands more Americans ---
senior citizens --- in approximately the same manner that the VA has already
used to disarm thousands of our veterans.
A review of the regulations reveals that virtually identical criteria to
that of the VA is going to be used by the Social Security Administration to
declare disability recipients incompetent, and then add them to the NICS under
the category of being “ mental defective.”
As is the case with the VA’s
so-called “adjudication process” the proposed SSA regulations contain confusing
and ambiguous definitions of who constitutes a “representative payee,” the
criteria for appointing such a payee, and why the appointment of such a payee
automatically classifies a Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiary as
mentally defective for the purpose of NICS.
It also appears that the
adjudication of a recipient as being mentally defective can be made by any
federal bureaucrat working for the SSA, and they can make the decision without
any medical professional being involved. The often vague and sometimes
generalized criteria for this adjudication process described in the proposed
regulations clearly denies the basic elements of due process to the affected
social security beneficiaries.
The burden of proving they are
competent and/or not mentally defective falls squarely on the Social Security
beneficiary. This means the bottom line for Social Security recipients is the
same as that for veterans. They are being denied their right to keep and bear
arms protected by the Second Amendment without due process of law.
The proposed regulations should be
withdrawn.
Sincerely
yours,
Michael
Connelly
Executive
Director
MC:ls
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