OFF THE WIRE
by NRA-ILA
On Friday, the Social Security Administration (SSA) released a draft
of a proposed rulemaking that would supposedly bring the agency into
compliance with what it claims is its responsibility to report
prohibited persons to the National Instant Criminal Background Check
System (NICS). The proposal focuses on five factors to determine if
certain SSA recipients receiving Disability Insurance or Supplemental
Security Income (SSI) have been “adjudicated as a mental defective” and
are therefore federally prohibited from possessing or receiving
firearms. It would also create an administrative procedure for affected
individuals to petition for restoration of their rights. The proposed
rule will remain open for public comment for 60 days.
We have been reporting since last summer on the Obama
administration’s plan to use SSA as a basis to strip Americans of their
Second Amendment rights. Concerns were initially raised by a report in
the Los Angeles Times that SSA would follow the lead of the Department
of Veterans Affairs by broadly reporting all beneficiaries receiving
payments whose funds were disbursed to another individual on the
beneficiary’s behalf. This prompted congressional inquiries, to which
SSA replied that the plan would not apply to all beneficiaries assigned
representative payees. The agency did not, however, elaborate on who
would be included, and it did not rule out using the assignment of a
representative payee as a consideration in determining who was
reportable.
SSA’s intentions have now been made public. As outlined in the
proposal, SSA would use five factors to determine which of its
Disability Insurance or SSI recipients have been “adjudicated” by the
agency as “mental defectives.”
The first factor is whether the individual filed his or her claim
with SSA based on disability. Thus, merely receiving retirement benefits
from SSA would not trigger further action.
