There are veterans who might need help with money, particularly with regard to any VA benefits they get. They might not be so bad off they can't be trusted to otherwise manage their own affairs, but they still need help.
For way too long, the VA figured that meant they weren't competent enough to own a gun, and actually made it so they couldn't. Now, though, that seems to be a relic of the past.
The fact that it happened at all is a major problem, particularly because the VA doesn't seem to actually have any judicial authority to put anyone on the prohibited list in the first place, yet they did it for decades.
The Department of Veterans Affairs today announced a major new step to protect Veterans’ Second Amendment rights. Effective immediately, VA will not report Veterans to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System as “prohibited persons” only because they need help from a fiduciary in managing their VA benefits.
This corrects a three-decade-old wrong that deprived many thousands of Veterans in VA’s Fiduciary Program of their constitutional right to own a firearm without a legal basis.
After a thorough review, VA recognized that many Veterans had been deprived of their Second Amendment rights without hearings or adequate determinations that they posed a sufficient risk of danger to themselves or others. In consultation with the Department of Justice, VA has determined this practice violates both the Gun Control Act and Veterans’ Second Amendment rights. According to federal law, a decision by a judicial or quasi-judicial body is needed before someone can be reported to NICS.
A determination by the VA that a fiduciary is needed to help manage a Veteran’s VA benefits falls far short of this legal standard.
In addition to immediately stopping the reporting of VA Fiduciary Program participants to NICS, the department is working with the FBI to remove all past VA reporting from NICS, so no Veterans are unfairly deprived of their Second Amendment rights based solely on participation in VA’s Fiduciary Program.
This is huge.
Let's understand that the way the law reads is that someone, in order to permanently lose their gun rights, must either be a convicted felon, convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, or be "adjudicated as mentally defective" by the court. That means due process for everyone who ends up on that list.
The problem is that the VA didn't bother with meeting that standard at all. They just figured that someone being bad with money was someone who was bad with everything else. How many men and women who served our nation were then denied their rights because some pissant bureaucrat figured that their needing help with managing their benefits meant they were a danger to the public? How many were illegally denied their right to keep and bear arms on a bureaucrat's whim?
Then, of course, we have to wonder how many refused to ask for help because they knew they'd lose their gun rights, and suffered needlessly as a result.
I'm not a fan of the government taking care of people, but with my brother and sister veterans, it's different. They signed on the dotted line to put life and limb in harm's way in defense of this nation, and part of that deal means the VA helping them out afterward.
This isn't helping people out.
I'm glad to see this happen.
I'm angry that it was ever needed in the first place.