According to a Los Angeles Times article two days ago, the Obama administration is seeking to add over four million social security recipients “to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, or NICS, which is used to prevent gun sales to felons, drug addicts, immigrants in the country illegally and others.”
The argument is that if their financial affairs are being managed by a family member or other fiduciary, presumably because they suffer from “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease,” these old people are incapable of exercising their Second Amendment rights. Based on a similar program employed by the Veterans Administration, such a program would affect about 4.2 million social security recipients.
But if they are so mentally deficient and incompetent, why should they be deprived of only their Second Amendment rights? Why not the First as well, since surely they could have no views or opinions to express that others need to hear? And why, for that matter, should they be allowed to have drivers’ licenses or even to vote?
