The Brady Campaign against veterans

November 9, 9:06 AMSt. Louis Gun Rights ExaminerKurt Hofmann

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    Photo courtesy of Oleg Volk

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Friday, I predicted that the forcible citizen disarmament lobby would try to exploit the Ft. Hood atrocity in furtherance of their agenda of inflicting more and more draconian gun laws on the American people.  The only question was what angle they would take.  Later that day, the answer to that question became clear, as I discussed on my blog.

As it turns out, the gun law pushers see not one, but two avenues to the forced plundering of Americans' gun safes: A) block efforts to defend veterans' Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms; and B) demonize the FN Herstal Five-seveN pistol, which was the model used by the killer.

Let's look at the first one today.

Not the sort to let the deaths of Americans go unexploited, the Brady Campaign's Paul Helmke wasted little time after the heinous, cowardly evil of the Ft. Hood massacre to try to twist it into an excuse to block efforts to protect veterans' Second Amendment rights.

When I heard of the tragedy yesterday, we were in the midst of planning a response to the latest dangerous legislative proposal from the gun lobby in the United States Senate - language to automatically restore access to guns to veterans designated by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the Justice Department as ‘mentally incapacitated’ or ‘mentally incompetent.’  In light of what happened yesterday - a violent attack by an emotionally unstable soldier - it is even clearer that the proposal being pushed by Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina should be rejected.

Helmke refers to S. 669 and H.R. 2547, both called the "Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act," which would simply require that denial of a veteran's gun rights, due to emtional issues he or she might deal with after returning home from war overseas, could only proceed with a court determination that the veteran's condition was such that he or she would be a danger to himself/herself or others.  Hardly the radically dangerous proposition that Helmke wishes to portray it to be.

As I've discussed before, between 1990s-era legislation that deems a veteran who is unable to manage his finances without help as "dangerously mentally ill," and thus requiring disarmament; and the NICS "Improvement" Act, this is extremely necessary legislation.

Scott Vogel, of the rabidly anti-gun (and cynically misnamed) "Freedom States Alliance" also got into the act.

In addition, our lawmakers must recognize that soldiers with multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and who suffer high rates of combat fatigue, PTSD, substance abuse and other mental health concerns, are at greater risk due to the easy access to guns. Despite this fact, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) is pushing a gun lobby backed bill, the Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act (S. 669), that would limit the circumstances in which a veteran’s name could be added to a federal database used to do instant background checks for gun purchases.

Vogel ignores the fact that the murderer was not a veteran of "multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan," or even one deployment.  Growing evidence leads inexorably to the conclusion that this despicable act was one of Islamic terrorism--it was certainly not a result of PTSD.

Besides, the Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act has not been passed, and Hasan still got his guns, so what does that bill have to do with the Ft. Hood mass-murder, anyway?  Keep in mind that the killer was a psychiatrist--the exact job description of the people who are now empowered to disarm veterans, without even a court process.

I wonder if it has occurred to opponents of the Veterans 2nd Amendment Protection Act, that their opposition is probably a great recruiting tool for the Oath Keepers.

We'll talk about the renewed effort to demonize the FN Five-seveN pistol tomorrow, absent new developments that would take precedence.