NDC Executive Director to House Committee: “VA Cannot Be Trusted” on Veterans’ Gun Rights
National Defense Committee Executive Director Bob Carey testified today before the House Veterans Affairs Committee on the urgent need to pass the Veterans 2nd Amendment Restoration Act.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has indiscriminately violated veterans’ rights for decades—not only to keep and possess arms, but also veterans’ due process rights, both of which are supposed to be protected from government overreach by the U.S. Constitution.
Under its current practices, when the VA determines that a veteran requires a fiduciary to administer his or her benefits, the agency automatically reports the individual to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Individuals on the NICS list cannot legally purchase a firearm.
This gross overreach is “fundamentally not in compliance with due process rights,” Mr. Carey testified.
“In effect, the VA has made themselves—I believe unconstitutionally—the Legislature, the Executive, and the Judiciary,” Carey stated. “Any clinician in the VA can refer a veteran to the fiduciary program… Then the veteran is responsible for proving their competency, not the other way around. The burden of proof lies on the veteran to prove their competency, not upon the VA to prove their incompetency.”
“The entire fiduciary program is a violation of veterans’ due process,” Mr. Carey said. “And then to add insult to injury, the VA reports them to the NICS database, and now, based on a faulty determination… they are informed, by the way, you can no longer purchase or possess a firearm.”
No independent oversight of the VA’s fiduciary program exists, nor does it meet the legal standard for adjudication or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) definition of mental defectiveness, Mr. Carey explained. “There are going to be a lot of [veterans] who have a good case to say, why was I referred?”
The VA has “repeatedly refused to examine the issue of combat exposure and veteran suicide risk,” Mr. Carey added, despite evidence that combat veterans have a four to five times higher suicide risk compared to overall veterans.
“The VA cannot be trusted on this issue. It will do whatever is necessary, laws or not, to report veterans to the NICS database.”
“We need the Veterans 2nd Amendment Restoration Act,” Mr. Carey concluded. “That’s the only way we are going to [fix this problem].”
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