Mental Health: The New Gun Rights Assault
Gun rights advocates need to be on the lookout for an insidious new tactic being launched by Mike Bloomberg and his minions.
Their latest line of attack is mental health. This actually isn’t so much a new approach as a refocusing and turbo charging of an older plan.
The strategy is to use the wide acceptance of the idea that the mentally ill should not have access to firearms as a front for prohibiting a broad array of “normal” people from possessing guns or ammunition.
As with most things, the devil is in the details. What is mental illness? Who is mentally ill? How mentally ill must one be to warrant revocation of a fundamental human right? Who makes that determination? Who is “normal,” and how “normal” do they have to be to own guns?
Back in 2013, one of Bloomberg’s pet politicians, Ralph Northam, whom Bloomberg spent over a million dollars to get elected as Lt. Governor of Virginia, spelled out the plan during a “gun violence” symposium.
The event turned out to be a gun control meeting discussing a strategy of trickery and deception to get firearm restrictions passed through legislatures by hiding it in bills dealing with mental health.
My friend Philip Van Cleave, the President of the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), was at the meeting and reported that Northam was very candid about the plan and the sneak attack strategies for bypassing committees and public comment, and preventing gun rights groups from being able to mount opposition until it’s too late.
He particularly lauded the Connecticut and New York models where both states used “emergency” legislation to pass draconian bills with no hearings, no committee votes and no public input.
He also discussed strategies to gain support from rights leaders by quietly negotiating deals to keep a bill “clean” and leave out overtly anti-rights provisions, while concealing the provisions that seriously threaten rights.
It isn’t often that we hear anti-rights extremists openly admitting their true strategies and objectives. Someone has probably since suggested to Mr. Northam that the first rule in executing an effective, secret plan might be to not announce the details of the plan in advance. Thankfully that advice can only come too late because the cat’s out of the bag and gun owners are mobilizing.
While this anti-rights sneak attack is just getting underway, you can be sure it is well-planned and well-funded, so expect to see a flood of bills dealing with mental health in general, and firearms access by the mentally ill in particular, introduced in Congress and state legislatures nationwide in the coming months.
These bills will be promoted as “common sense,” but they will contain definitions so broad that hundreds of thousands — possibly millions — of regular folks who have been or are being successfully treated for common, minor, mental and emotional issues will be denied their right to arms as “mental defectives.”
People suffering from mild depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, even women treated for PMS, could be lumped in with violent schizophrenics and the criminally insane.
Liberty is a never-ending struggle. Be prepared to respond to these bills, and take action now to warn your elected representatives about the coming sneak attacks.
Jeff Knox is the Director of The Firearms Coalition. Reprinted with permission. ©2019 The Firearms Coalition, all rights reserved. FirearmsCoalition.org.
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Category: Editorial