Your doctor could put you on no-gun listCongress fast-tracks plan to let physicians ban weapons ownership

By Naomi Laine: The House of Representatives has fast-tracked new legislation to "improve" the National Instant Criminal Background Check System by allowing doctors to now decide who can own firearms. . . . The plan is the first congressional effort to curtail gun ownership rights in a decade, but by being put on the fast track was exempted from the ordinary committee hearings and public scrutiny most proposals are sent through . . . The plan allows names to be entered into the NICS system based solely on a physician's diagnosis or prescription of a medication: adults who have taken Ritalin and soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder would be classified as mentally ill and given the same opportunity to own firearms as convicted felons: None.

Gun Owners of America is one of only a few organizations alerting consumers to the implications. "Under this bill, based solely on a diagnosis of a psychiatrist, an American's name could be dumped into the National Criminal Instant Check (NICS) system," said GOA Executive Director Larry Pratt, who called the plan "conviction by diagnosis." The organization, which launched a campaign to lobby the Senate to reject the plan, said the McCarthy plan "dramatically" expands the "dragnet" used to disqualify law-abiding gun buyers. "So much so, that hundreds of thousands of honest citizens who want to buy a gun will one day walk into a gun store and be shocked when they're told they're a prohibited purchaser, having been lumped into the same category as murderers and rapists," the organization said in a statement on its website . . . [Read More]

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