Republican Representative John Barrasso of Wyoming
The House of Representatives on Thursday evening voted to overturn an Obama-era rule that had been put in place to prevent people with severe mental illnesses from buying firearms.
The rule, which was finalized by the Social Security Administration in December, banned Social Security beneficiaries from buying guns if their disability payments are handled by an outside party due to their “marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease.”
Appearing on CNN Friday morning, Rep. John Barrasso (R – WY) defended his vote to overturn the rule on the basis that it went into effect at the very end of President Barack Obama’s second term, and was thus a “midnight” regulation that deserved to be scrutinized. Although the rule was only put into effect in December, it had actually been in the works for years, and was a response to the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012.
But when Barrasso was asked repeatedly by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota whether he thought that it was a good idea […]
It seems to me this is more about failure to address mental illness than about guns. People have a right to own guns and defend themselves. If we spent trillions of dollars on researching how to truly help those suffering with what the psychological community deems “mental illness” instead of dropping bombs & invading other coutries..maybe we wouldn’t need to worry so much about stripping away peoples rights which mainly treats the symptom but not the real problem. I think we live in a mentally ill system that says violence is okay if the government perpetrates it on others but when an individual does violence then it is not okay. This is incoherent, to say the least.