Did you know that President Donald Trump wants to put firearms in the hands of the mentally ill?
You shouldn’t, because it’s not true, but that hasn’t prevented liberals from claiming as much. And given the headlines, you could be forgiven for actually thinking that’s what Trump’s policy is.
NPR’s headline yesterday read “Trump Repeals Rule Designed To Block Gun Sales To Certain Mentally Ill People.” And they weren’t the only ones.
Rachel Maddow made it seem like Trump’s stance was so radical that he wouldn’t even allow cameras to capture him signing the bill making it “easier for seriously mentally ill people to buy guns.”
They decided not to have the cameras there today when Trump signed the bill to make it easier for seriously mentally ill people to buy guns.
— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 28, 2017
So what is this law they’re talking about, and is its goal what liberals claim it is? What’s being debated is an Obama-era gun control policy, and for all the claims that Trump is doing the “NRA’s bidding,” the ACLU actually backs Trump on this. But I guess “he’s doing the bidding of the NRA and ACLU!” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
Remember, the government’s intentions and the results are two completely different things.
According to the American Association of People with Disabilities:
This rule would require the Social Security Administration to forward the names of all Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefit recipients who use a representative payee to help manage their benefits due to a mental impairment to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).
Or, in layman’s terms: The rule would have allowed bureaucrats within one of our federal agencies to bar American citizens from exercising a constitutional right — and on the highly questionable grounds that to be incapable of managing one’s finances is, by definition, to be a “mental defective.”
The ACLU also sent out a letter urging the gun control measure to be struck down, noting that “the rule automatically conflates one disability-related characteristic, that is, difficulty managing money, with the inability to safely posses a firearm. Like most sane people, the ACLU doesn’t want the Social Security Administration to be the judge jury and executioner in determining whether or not senior citizens “lack the mental capacity to contract of manage his own affairs.”
When two groups diametrically politically opposed to one another agree, like the ACLU and the NRA, it should be a sign that the rule in question is ridiculous.
Nearly as ridiculous as the headlines claiming Trump just put guns in the hands of the mentally ill.
Is this the most ridiculous gun lie you’ve ever seen? Share your thoughts below!
