The Boy King is at war with the People and their flawed document. Again. And this time — as with much of how the left operates — semantics and deconstruction of language will be the tool through which they oppress us:
President Obama has released two new executive actions on background checks for gun purchases. The actions were posted on WhiteHouse.gov Friday afternoon and according to the Department of Justice and Health and Human Services, will make it easier for states to submit mental health information to the federal background check system known as the National Instant Criminal Background Check System or NICS.
“Today, the Administration is announcing two new executive actions that will help strengthen the federal background check system and keep guns out of the wrong hands. The Department of Justice (DOJ) is proposing a regulation to clarify who is prohibited from possessing a firearm under federal law for reasons related to mental health, and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is issuing a proposed regulation to address barriers preventing states from submitting limited information on those persons to the federal background check system,” the executive action announcement states. “The Administration’s two new executive actions will help ensure that better and more reliable information makes its way into the background check system. The Administration also continues to call on Congress to pass common-sense gun safety legislation and to expand funding to increase access to mental health services.”
The actions:
-Some states have noted that the terminology used by federal law to prohibit people from purchasing a firearm for certain mental health reasons is ambiguous. Today, DOJ is issuing a proposed rule to make several clarifications. For example, DOJ is proposing to clarify that the statutory term “committed to a mental institution” includes involuntary inpatient as well as outpatient commitments. In addition to providing general guidance on federal law, these clarifications will help states determine what information should be made accessible to the federal background check system, which will, in turn, strengthen the system’s reliability and effectiveness.
-Some states have also said that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act’s (HIPAA) privacy provisions may be preventing them from making relevant information available to the background check system regarding individuals prohibited from purchasing a firearm for mental health reasons. In April 2013, HHS began to identify the scope and extent of the problem, and based on public comments is now issuing a proposed rule to eliminate this barrier by giving certain HIPAA covered entities an express permission to submit to the background check system the limited information necessary to help keep guns out of potentially dangerous hands. The proposed rule will not change the fact that seeking help for mental health problems or getting treatment does not make someone legally prohibited from having a firearm. Furthermore, nothing in the proposed rule would require reporting on general mental health visits or other routine mental health care, or would exempt providers solely performing these treatment services from existing privacy rules.While it is important states are easily able to submit mental health information to the federal background check system, changes in HIPAA should come with extreme scrutiny and thought due to a high risk of changes in the law resulting in major privacy violations. Many doctors are already asking patients (and not just those with mental health problems) about whether or not they have a gun in their home, a fine line to walk.
In the executive action announcement, the White House also urged Congress to pass more gun control measures, some of which Democrats voted no on early last year.
While the President and the Vice President continue to do everything they can to reduce gun violence, Congress must also act. Passing common-sense gun safety legislation – including expanding background checks and making gun trafficking a federal crime – remains the most important step we can take to reduce gun violence.The vast majority of Americans support these critical measures, which would protect our children and our communities without infringing on anyone’s Second Amendment rights.Always be wary of the phrase “common-sense gun safety,” especially when it comes from gun control advocates. No “common-sense” gun control law has ever reduced crime or mass shootings. If advocates have to tell you they aren’t infringing on your Second Amendment rights, they are probably infringing on your Second Amendment rights. Further, gun trafficking is already a federal offense.
It is not difficult to recognize a camel’s nose poking under the tent, and the plan here — which is a plan other socialist and Marxist-Leninist political ideologies have deployed to unfortunate success — is to begin the process of having the government politicize mental health, with the upshot being future expansions and changes to the criteria for defining and codifying mental health issues, from prescription drugs issued to the conflation of ailments relating to mental health that have no connection to gun violence, and yet will permit the government to take away from certain citizens a natural right they have no authority to take away, and only the authority to secure.
Beyond mere privacy concerns — and those are of course legion, and tied not only to these Executive fiats but also to ObamaCare’s governmental intrusion into the doctor/patient relationship (thanks, John Roberts!) — what these orders do are disincentivize people who may need treatment for depression or other mental illnesses (PTSD, etc) from seeking help, knowing that to do so would mean that they will, in the future, be treated as citizens with reduced rights, even though they’ve committed no crime.
This is a form of fatalism insinuating its way into politics under the guise of protection; and it sets the stage for other such programs and instances in which the greater good is said to be served, from eliminating the financial burden of defective children by killing them in utero (see Belgium) to the world in which genetic coding is read as predetermining behavior.
At which point the government becomes the final arbiter of what is said to be genetically beneficial and what is not — a slippery slope down which others have traveled, and not too very long ago.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. But the question is, what do we do about those who haven’t forgotten about the past, and yet seek to repeat it, anyway?
Hey, look. And look where, too. The bogeyman regenerates. That Southern Poverty Law Center is like the fabled little engine that could, ain’t it?
So we are going from a judicial proceeding with lawyers from both sides presenting evidence to a standard where a policeman, a doctor, a parent of a minor “child” (when I was growing up you were a minor until 21) (others too?) can “involuntarily” commit someone to an outpatient clinic for evaluation and that act will take away their right to own a firearm forever, and the right of anyone who lives with them also as we have seen in California?
Meanwhile criminals continue to get weapons without going through the new background checks, and registration continues to lead directly to confiscation of lawfully owned weapons that have never been used in a crime by dint of force…
Read an interesting comment that explains exactly WHY registration both fails to prevent crimes, and will always lead to confiscation…
http://booksbikesboomsticks.blogspot.com/2013/12/they-say-definition-of-insanity.html
Molon Labe.
HIPAA may be about to join DOMA among the laws Congress has passed that Barack Obama intends to just set aside because he wants to.
sdferr
I very much doubt there are 80K to 300K “sovereign citizens.” That IS *bogeyman* numbers.
But they do exist and some of them are just criminal nutcases. I’ve had the misfortune to run across them at my work from time to time. They don’t recognize law and yet engage in lawfare. And some of them actually threaten any attorney or judge they come in contact with.
With the end-goal, of course, of declaring the simple intention of owning a firearm to be a “mental health issue” – obviously, a clear precursor to violent behavior, what with wanting to own an instrument of violence and all that…
And this is precisely why I didn’t want Obamacare. The idea of a centralized database of citizen health records is just too darn tempting to politicians and bureaucrats. There will be no limit to their “need” access to our records. Of course all of these “needs” will result in them exerting more control over our lives.
Well, nothing says “paranoid, anti-social” like wanting to own a firearm because you’re afraid the authorities might not be up to the job, right?
Two things that all of the most recent mass killers – Loughner, Holms, Lanza, Tsarnaev – had in common were mental illness and a serious pot habit. And yet Obama and the gun controllers only care about one of those factors while celebrating legalized pot.
I’m quite confident that the authorities are more than up to the job of being paranoid and anti-social.
Wait, what?
This has already been factored in since one of the questions on form 44-73 would apply to anyone using pot, legal or illegal since it is still illegal at the federal level.
Obtaining a medical marijuana card would be proof that you should be denied when applying to purchase a firearm. I would expect that the feds will get the names of anyone buying “legal” pot in CO one way or another and put that info into the NICS system too.
Thanks, geoffb, that’s reassuring to hear.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/02/17/the-nation-toughest-gun-control-law-made-massachusetts-less-safe/3845k7xHzkwTrBWy4KpkEM/story.html
Best catch ever.
Dunno if this is on other threads, but it’s breaking on Twitter: Jenny McCarthy’s kid doesn’t even have autism. He was misdiagnosed.
Wow. Blood on her hands.
She’ll stick to her guns, metaphorically.
The fooking anti-vaxxers are going to be the death of us all.
Passing common-sense gun safety legislation – including expanding background checks and making gun trafficking a federal crime – remains the most important step we can take to reduce gun violence.The vast majority of Americans support these critical measures, which would protect our children and our communities without infringing on anyone’s Second Amendment rights.
Um… “shall not be infringed” pretty much means even “common sense” legislation is an infringement.
The vast majority of Americans support these critical measures
The vast majority supported the traditional definition of marriage, and the vast majority opposed ObamaCare, too, but look where that vast majority has gotten us…
Dallas Store Manager Shoots at 5 Armed Robbers Police Arrive 74 Minutes Later
I thought it already was. Or is “gun trafficking” as formerly practiced by the Sons of Anarchy, and for which they were pursued by the ATF, not really against federal law?
This is trafficking-trafficking, McGehee.
>making gun trafficking a federal crime<
not if you are the fed gov't. you think boehner/mcconnell care?
Beta testing now progressing.
The idea of a centralized database of citizen health records is just too darn tempting to politicians and bureaucrats.
The term “tempting” implies that the database was not created specifically to give politicians and bureaucrats a systematic method to destroy their enemies.
Obamacare is about everything but healthcare. All of the progg’s attempts to socialize healthcare always have been about control.
Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Buy guns. Lots of guns.
And ammunition.
Somethin’s cookin’
Amen, Mueller.
http://www.humanevents.com/2014/01/03/study-shows-concealed-carry-laws-result-in-fewer-murders/
The Tea Party is the subject of a panel discussion on CSpan right now. Mostly academics.
Some of them come close to almost getting it.
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/03/detroit-police-chief-want-crime-to-drop-start-carrying/
Thanks, geoffb, that’s reassuring to hear.
Yes. It’s always so amusing reading about hunters getting drunk and shooting themselves in the ass, the door of the truck, whatever, their own son in the head. Nothing like those nice calm alert sharp shooting tequila drinkers. And it does help having a big fat beer belly so the concealed carry fits snugly.
Be sure to bring a spare hatchet with you to the dispensaries, Carrie.
Then Chuck Barris laughs as Soupy Sales stumbles over and hits the gong.
Yes. It’s always so amusing reading about about hunters getting drunk…
So many cliches, so little time.
I notice that the anti-gun left is supportive of these “regulations.” They love those steps that look innocuous but have buried ‘Easter eggs” that become visible to most only after the law/regulation goes into effect. “You have to sign the Executive order to know what’s in it.”
Definitions will be what gets tweaked later in a way that will ban huge numbers of people from possession of firearms. NICS only deals with sales but under the law the same things that stop a person from buying also ban possession. And they are retroactive so that you may have legally owned/bought a gun in the past but later due to something you did, something done to you or just a change in definitions you overnight become prohibited from having any firearms.
Then is when registration swings into play and you get that knock on the door, or the knocked down door by the MRAP driving guys. California is testing the system out now as I said at 10:59 above.
Let’s see if I have this right: you own a gun/guns and the authoritays come to take them away. In a futile individual gesture of molan labe, you shoot it out and get dead. The fact that you used your guns means that you were mentally ill and shouldn’t have had them in the first place.
Res ipsa loquitor.
Indeed.
Make like the old Jew in the cautionary tale and hide them, least they be confiscated.
‘Tis a shame I went on that boating expedition with my entire gun collection in such a leaky, top-heavy craft…
Unfortunately, I was the only one who could swim…
My son went in the basement the other day, looked my various gun gear and said, “This place would make a hippy cry.”
To which you of course replied, “Good.”
I actually said that hippy tears were good gun lube.
If the hippy’s only crying and not soiling himself as well, you’re not trying hard enough.
The idea of Red entertaining hippies in his fortress of solitude is a scream.
That’s probably the hippies screaming.
leigh says January 5, 2014 at 10:10 am
Indeed.
Make like the old Jew in the cautionary tale and hide them, least they be confiscated.
– See more at: https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=52364#comments
The way it seems to be shaping up, it looks like both sides are heading for a confrontation.
God forbid.
it looks like both sides are heading for a confrontation.
Which is why they want us to voluntarily surrender. Somewhat like Custer felt when he reached Little Bighorn, I would imagine…
” She’ll stick to her guns, metaphorically.”
I doubt her guns are very marketable anymore. She was so 20 years ago.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/new-study-demolishes-almost-every-gun-control-myth/