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Misguided NRA bashers are doing a better job of helping the anti-gun movement than the anti-gunners could do themselves. You may have heard or read things like "NRA pushing gun control" or "NRA supporting bill to disarm veterans" or "NRA in bed with Schumer and Kennedy," etc. A number of gun rights organizations have generated a wave of criticism over HR 2640 and its supposedly terrible effect on gun ownership. They make the NRA sound so bad that Sarah Brady might even become a Life Member. The misinformed pro-gunners who spew this venom are shooting our gun rights in the foot and potentially stopping thousands of otherwise law abiding citizens from regaining their gun rights.

NRA deserves PRAISE for HR 2640. In the aftermath of the atrocity at Virginia Tech, the NRA was able to turn a renewed anti-gun hysteria into a pro-gun gain. HR 2640 is a shrewdly devised bill that creates no new prohibited persons, limits records, helps veterans, and mandates a system of relief so that disqualified persons can legally own guns again. But hey, don't just take my word for it. This is why Josh Sugarmann, founder and executive director of the rabidly anti-gun Violence Policy Center (VPC), OPPOSES HR 2640.

...

Much of "the sky is falling" alarmist warnings have been over the definition of the term "adjudicated as a mental defective"; they claim that with the bill allowing "adjudication" by not only a court, but by a "board, commission, or other lawful authority," a person could be prohibited from possessing guns by the declaration of a "board" of, say, any two anti-gun psychiatrists. What HR 2640 actually says is as follows (go to http://thomas.loc.gov/ and look up bill number HR 2640):

(2) MENTAL HEALTH TERMS- The terms `adjudicated as a mental defective', `committed to a mental institution', and related terms have the meanings given those terms in regulations implementing section 922(g)(4) of title 18, United States Code, as in effect on the date of the enactment of this Act.

That's right: HR 2640 merely adopts the well settled federal regulation that has ALREADY defined the term for years. Here is what that regulation, 27CFR478.11, ALREADY says under the Code of Federal Regulations:

Adjudicated as a mental defective. (a) A determination by a court,
board, commission, or other lawful authority that a person, as a result
of marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency,
condition, or disease:
(1) Is a danger to himself or to others; or
(2) Lacks the mental capacity to contract or manage his own affairs.

(b) The term shall include--
(1) A finding of insanity by a court in a criminal case; and
(2) Those persons found incompetent to stand trial or found not
guilty by reason of lack of mental responsibility pursuant to article
50a and 72b of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. 850a, 876b.

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Even if HR 2640 is defeated, this regulation is not going away. HOWEVER, if HR 2640 is passed, then for the first time, folks who have lost their gun rights due to being "adjudicated as a mental defective" may get RELIEF, regardless of how the "adjudicated" term is defined! (See HR 2640 sections 105 - state relief - and 101(b)(c)(2) - federal relief.)

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Please contact your U.S. Senators and ask them to make this bill law without delay so that thousands of folks denied their gun rights can get their rights restored, including 80,000 veterans disarmed by former President Clinton.


http://www.pgnh.org/enough_nra_bashing

I've read the complex bill, and see it as a help. (1) It doesn't add anyone to the prohibited person list who isn't already there. (2) At most, it increases the number of names in the list, which isn't a good thing, but since it's already a felony for those folks to possess a gun, it's hard to see how letting them get a gun, and then be subject to prosecution, is a good idea. This way they at least get alerted. (3) Most importantly, it lets people on the list for a mental committent get off the list, and has pretty broad standards for letting them do it. Right now, if a person has EVER been committed to an institution, they are barred for life. There's no restoration of rights, or even pardon, such as we have in the area of a felony conviction. I know two people who are in that position, committed for a few days many years ago, thoroughly upstanding and stable people today -- but without something like this, they're barred for life.
http://armsandthelaw.com/archives/2007/ ... r_2640.php

The BATF letter also is quite clear that voluntary hospitalization or being held for observation is not a commitment, and neither is "a stay in a mental institution that never involved any form of adjudication by a lawful authority."

Yes, if a court went ahead and declared that a person was mentally defective because of Alzheimer's, he could be disarmed. But relatively few people are adjudicated as mentally defective because of Alzheimer's--and I would guess that when this happens, it is probably with good reason. The example that Gun Owners of America gives, a psychiatrist evaluating patients--is clearly not a due process adjudication.

The returning veterans concern is something that H.R. 2640 specifically deals with, and corrects--so this is actually a gain for this group.

The school psychologist? What? That's not a due process adjudication--not even close.

I am not aware of ANY state where a psychologist has authority to involuntarily commit a patient "with no due process at all." In general, state laws give substantially more authority to psychiatrists on this count than psychologists, but even psychiatrists don't have this kind of power in any state, to my knowledge.
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/200 ... 0974920411

I was at first a little surprised at the number of people who have been finding some nefarious and dastardly plot in H.R. 2640. I am no fan of the gun control crowd, and I look pretty carefully at whatever scheme they come up with, because I am not terribly trusting of their good intentions. Still, I read the various criticisms of H.R. 2640, and I just don't see that it fundamentally puts gun rights at risk, except for the relatively small number of people who have been involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. Thanks largely to the ACLU, involuntary commitment (as opposed to being held for observation) is really quite difficult in the United States, and has been for a couple of decades.

So why is there this profound mistrust of not only H.R. 2640, but also of the NRA, for backing it? A friend of mine, Don Kates, who is the elder scholar of the gun rights movement in America, describes the net effect of the gun control movement's continuing efforts to disarm law-abiding people as "poisoning the well." They have created so much mistrust that even when they come together with the NRA on what should be an uncontroversial bill, there is an assumption that if the gun control crowd is for it, it has to have a dark, incredibly subtle underside to it.

Let's get straight about this: H.R. 2640 doesn't really change who is prohibited from owning a gun. The rules about those who have been adjudicated mentally incompetent not being allowed to own a gun have been in place since the Gun Control Act of 1968. If anything, H.R. 2640 is an improvement on the current system, because it provides an appeal mechanism for those who were wrongly declared mentally incompetent in the past. What it changes is the requirement for states to report this information to the federal government. Argue if you want that there's a privacy issue here, or a federalism issue, but this really isn't changing who is prohibited from owning a gun.
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/200 ... 9253726066