White House proposes banning guns for Social Security recipients who can't manage their money

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last updated 20 July 2015

The Obama administration is pushing to extend rules for gun ownership that already apply in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to the Social Security Administration (SSA). The new parameters would prohibit Social Security recipients from owning a weapon if they are unable to manage their own financial affairs.

If the change goes through, as many as 4.2 million people whose finances are managed for them by a "representative payee" could be affected.

While supporters argue that the rule change would belatedly bring the SSA in line with federal laws prohibiting gun sales to people with "marked subnormal intelligence, or mental illness, incompetency, condition, or disease," opponents say the ban is nonsensical. "Someone can be incapable of managing their funds but not be dangerous, violent, or unsafe," explains Dr. Marc Rosen, a psychiatrist at Yale. "They are very different determinations."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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