Sen. Feinstein Says Veterans Are Mentally Ill, Can’t Own Guns

Hat tip to Linda Palucci from Mr. Conservative Blog for picking up this testimony by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA). Florida is home to over 1.6 million veterans. Florida is second only to California with the largest veteran population. Florida is first of all the states as a percentage of population.

Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA)

Palucci reports:

Feinstein let slip her true opinion of America’s veterans during a Senate Judiciary committee hearing, when she was asked to discuss a proposed amendment to her pending gun control bill. This amendment would have allowed military veterans to obtain guns that would be banned for other Americans. Feinstein thought this was a terrible idea, because she presumes vets are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and are therefore too unstable to be trusted with weapons:

“…this adds an exemption of retired military. As I understand our bill, no issue has arose in this regard during the 10 years the expired ban was effect… and what we did in the other bill was exempt possession by the United States or a department or agency of the United States… that included active military. The problem with expanding this is that you know with the advent of PTSD, which I think is a new phenomenon as a product of the Iraq War, it’s not clear how the seller or transferrer of a firearm covered by this bill would verify that an individual was a member, or a veteran, and that there was no impairment of that individual with respect to having a weapon like this. So you know I would be happy to sit down with you again and see if we could work something out but I think we have to — if you’re going to do this, find a way that veterans who are incapacitated for one reason or another mentally don’t have access to this kind of weapon.” [My emphasis]

Palucci states, “Translation? All vets suffer from PTSD; PTSD makes them crazy; crazy people can’t get guns.”

“Not only is Feinstein wrong about vets, she’s wrong about PTSD, which she characterizes as a ‘new phenomenon’. In every war, some returning veterans have suffered delayed reactions. Whether it’s World War I’s ‘shell shock’, the Vietnam war’s ‘vet syndrome’, or today’s PTSD, it’s always been out there, and it’s never been a major societal problem. Only a Democrat would pretend that it’s something new and then use it to take away Second Amendment rights from those who have served this country in battle,” notes Palucci.

Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK)

Halimah Abdullah from CNN reports:

Republican Sen. Tom Coburn pushed and then backed away from an amendment to block the Department of Veteran Affairs from automatically entering the names of veterans deemed “mentally incompetent” to handle their finances from having their names entered into a national background check system, thereby blocking them from gun ownership.

Instead, the Oklahoma physician wanted those case[s] decided by a judge rather than a federal agency unless those veterans had been “found by a judicial authority to be a danger to themselves or to others.”

“We’re not asking for anything big,” Coburn said at the time. “We’re just saying that if you’re going to take away the Second Amendment rights — they ought to have it adjudicated, rather than mandated by someone who’s unqualified to state that they should lose their rights.”

Should vets with PTSD, mental illness still have access to guns?

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