walrus51

Wow! This headline caught my attention!

After some basic research, The Walrus is really disappointed – yet again – with some of the folks from the NRA.

Working through Rush Limbaugh – a true master of incendiary drama — Chris Cox from the NRA has just issued a ‘marginally correct’ announcement which seems to imply that our federal government is on track to deprive any and all older Americans from their ‘2nd amendment rights’ to keep and bear Arms.

The announcement states, “STOP OBAMA NOW! The Biggest Gun Grab in American History!”

“… the Obama administration is moving to strip away the Second Amendment rights of over four million Americans who receive Social Security benefits through a ‘representative payee.’ Not only would this backdoor gun prohibition amount to the BIGGEST GUN GRAB in American history, but it’s happening without ANY vote in Congress or ANY due process for millions of law-abiding Americans.” http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/07/20/government_you_want_your_social_security_fine_then_give_us_your_guns

Yes, this is the very same Chris Cox who was paid – out of generous NRA member contributions from you and me – some $828,000+ in compensation and benefits in FYE 12/31/2013.

By way of background: at the close of 2014, there were 58 million people receiving traditional Social Security benefits, and an additional eight million US residents receiving SSI (SSDI) benefits.

Supplemental Security Income (SSI) is a Federal income supplement program funded by general tax revenues (not Social Security taxes). It was created to help provide a safety net to help aged, blind, and disabled people, who have little or no income; and it provides cash to meet basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter.

So, the over four million Americans who would be impacted by this action are people who have been identified through a court action during which it was determined that the person is incapable of managing their own affairs, and thus has somebody else receiving the monthly transfer benefit for them to manage on their behalf.

Some activists for cart-blanche gun rights; mental-health advocates; and supporters for the disabled have stepped forward to state that expanding the list of people prohibited from owning guns based on mental and/or financial competence is wrong.

A Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Marc Rosen, said “Someone can be incapable of managing their funds but not be dangerous, violent or unsafe.”

Yet, over half of the individuals identified by the VA who fall into the category where a third party has been appointed as a fiduciary are people 80 or older, often with dementia, seemingly reasonable criterion for discouraging gun ownership.

The Walrus is a citizen who hopes to die of natural causes, and he wants to believe that one role of government is to protect us from random violence.

It seems to be widely accepted that people who: (a) suffer from extreme depression; (b) lack mental capacity; (c) are no longer able to function independently; or (d) have a medically determinable physical or mental impairment or combination of impairment(s) which is severe, i.e. it significantly limits the physical or mental ability to do basic work activities — are those people who might be unstable some or all of the time, and thus ought to discouraged from ‘uninfringed’ gun possession and usage.

While The Walrus completely understands and appreciates the need for Chris Cox and his colleagues to raise huge sums of money to help fund their very generous salaries and benefits, The Walrus also values the real truth, the whole truth and the complete truth.

Somehow, The Walrus is feeling as though Chris Cox and Rush Limbaugh haven’t told us very much of the real truth, and that is why The Walrus is feeling both very sad and quite disappointed.