U.S. House Votes to Revoke Obama’s Social Security Gun Ban
On Thursday the U.S. House passed H.J. Res. 40, a joint resolution to revoke the Social Security gun ban enacted by the Obama administration on December 19.
USA Today reports that the vote to revoke the ban was 253-180, and was “largely along party lines.
Breitbart News previously reported:
The Social Security gun ban began to be fashioned behind closed doors in the summer of 2015 and was finalized just before Christmas 2016. It allows the Social Security Administration (SSA) to bar certain beneficiaries from buying guns based on a need for help in managing their finances.
Beneficiaries catch the SSA’s attention by having their checks sent to a third party for management and this results in an investigation into the mental status of the Social Security recipient. That investigation can result in a SSA ruling that certain beneficiaries are mentally defunct, thereby barring them from from firearm purchases.
Last last week House Republicans made known that the ban was in their crosshairs. Reuters quoted House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s spokesman saying, “The Republican-dominated House will bypass the committee process and go directly to a vote by the entire chamber on a half-dozen resolutions.” The GOP is able to do this via the Congressional Review Act, by which “Congress can use simple majority votes to stop recent regulations in their tracks.”
NRA-ILA executive director Chris Cox praised the House vote, saying, “The Obama administration’s last minute, back-door gun grab would have stripped law-abiding Americans of their Second Amendment rights without due process. Today’s vote was the first step in revoking this unconstitutional action.”
Cox added, “We look forward to Senate action and President Trump signing this important legislation into law.”
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast.
