The Obama administration has in its crosshairs some 4.2 million Social Security recipients who use a fiduciary to handle their monthly benefits, according to
The Los Angeles Times, which reports that the White House is looking to prohibit those who have been found incompetent to manage their own financial affairs from owning guns.
The proposal — part of an overall maneuver to bolster gun laws since the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut — would require the Social Security Administration to report those 4.2 million people to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which ensures felons, drug addicts, illegal immigrants and others cannot buy firearms.
According to the Times, the 4.2 million figure represents those who receive monthly benefits but use a fiduciary because of "marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease."
The figure breaks down to about 2.7 million people with mental health problems — "a potentially higher risk category for gun ownership" — and 1.5 million who have their finances managed by others "for a variety of reasons."
The NRA and other gun-rights advocates have already said they will object.
National Council on Disability member Ari Ne’eman told the Times that the independent federal agency would oppose "any policy that used assignment of a representative payee as a basis to take any fundamental right from people with disabilities."
"The rep payee is an extraordinarily broad brush," he said.
Dr. Marc Rosen, a Yale psychiatrist who has studied mentally ill veterans and how they manage their money, cautioned the Times that "someone can be incapable of managing their funds, but not be dangerous."
"They are very different determinations," Rosen said.
In December, Bloomberg reported on a
federal appeals court ruling that a history of mental illness should not prohibit citizens from owning a weapon.
The case under consideration involved a Michigan man who in 2011 was denied a gun permit based on the fact that he had been committed to a mental institution in 1985 after suffering a breakdown during a contentious divorce, according to Bloomberg.
After a month, the man was released and returned to work. But federal law bars those with a past history of mental illness from owning a firearm unless they qualify for an exception.
A Cincinnati appeals court found that the law’s provision barring gun ownership for anyone "adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution" violates the Second Amendment, according to Bloomberg.