The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

When Crazy Is Against the Law …

Posted on | January 5, 2016 | 59 Comments

. . . only outlaws will be crazy:

Delivering on its promise to deliver “common sense” gun control, the Obama administration on Monday finalized a rule that enables health care providers to report the names of mentally ill patients to an FBI firearms background check system.
The action was one of a series of steps that President Barack Obama had called for in January 2013 in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., shootings to curb gun violence, but the rule was not published until today.
While the 1993 Brady law prohibits gun ownership by individuals who have been involuntarily committed, found incompetent to stand trial or otherwise deemed by a court to be a danger to themselves or others, federal health care privacy rules prohibited doctors and other providers from sharing information without the consent of their patients.
Under the rule, which takes effect next month, for the first time health providers can disclose the information to the background check system without legal repercussions.
“The disclosure is restricted to limited demographic and certain other information needed for NICS purposes,” the rule states.

So when you use your ObamaCare insurance to get free mental health treatment, the doctor will report you to the FBI.

This should work out nicely. Thanks, Big Government!

UPDATE: Apparatchiks in the Politburo have been busy, comrades:

The White House released a fact-sheet Jan. 4 which previews the executive gun control Obama will unveil Tuesday and one aspect of the new controls is the inclusion of “information from the Social Security Administration in the background check system about beneficiaries who are prohibited from possessing a firearm.” . . .
According to the White House executive order preview:

Current law prohibits individuals from buying a gun if, because of a mental health issue, they are either a danger to themselves or others or are unable to manage their own affairs. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has indicated that it will begin the rulemaking process to ensure that appropriate information in its records is reported to NICS. The reporting that SSA, in consultation with the Department of Justice, is expected to require will cover appropriate records of the approximately 75,000 people each year who have a documented mental health issue, receive disability benefits, and are unable to manage those benefits because of their mental impairment, or who have been found by a state or federal court to be legally incompetent.

Now, if only they could ban these kooks from Tumblr . . .

 

Comments

59 Responses to “When Crazy Is Against the Law …”

  1. kilo6
    January 5th, 2016 @ 9:23 am

    … men are so simple, and so subject to present necessities, that he who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.

    -Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince (ch 18)

  2. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 5th, 2016 @ 9:46 am

    This is a lot of posturing by Obama for the Democrats’ version of political failure theater. At least it is not Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell in the title roll this time.

  3. RS
    January 5th, 2016 @ 9:56 am

    . . . the approximately 75,000 people each year who have a documented mental health issue, receive disability benefits, and are unable to manage those benefits because of their mental impairment, or who have been found by a state or federal court to be legally incompetent.

    This is not really a change to the law. If someone has been adjudicated incapacitated and disabled–two legal terms of art which necessitate findings that someone is mentally incapable of taking care of their finances and incapable of taking care of themselves–they are already precluded from owning a firearm.

    The problem is that the SSA allows disability payments to be made to relatives without a necessary adjudication. The answer is to require an adjudication of incompetency before paying SSD payments to someone other than than person entitled to them. This loophole has been used for years to allow evil relatives to plunder benefits from family members.

  4. CrustyB
    January 5th, 2016 @ 10:30 am

    Don’t forget that these people think “disapproving of Obama” is a mental illness rather than common sense.

  5. ScienceABC123
    January 5th, 2016 @ 10:44 am

    This is nuts!

    Now all a corrupt doctor has to do is let some progressive/leftist politician know that he’ll gladly add their political enemies to the FBI’s “mental health list”, for a small fee of course.

  6. NeoWayland
    January 5th, 2016 @ 10:57 am

    Don’t forget according to certain progressives, denying the horrors of anthropogenic climate change is evidence of insanity.

    ETA: anthropogenic not anthropomorphic. It was a long night and my tea isn’t working

  7. Mike G.
    January 5th, 2016 @ 11:02 am

    Hmmm, so all those people who couldn’t find jobs in the last recession, lost their unemployment benefits and claimed some kind of mental disability, Bipolar Disorder being the favorite, to get SSI disability payments are fair game?

    Probably a lot of gun owners in that group.

  8. Mike G.
    January 5th, 2016 @ 11:06 am
  9. Steve White
    January 5th, 2016 @ 11:10 am

    I propose that Stacy & Co. perform a public service. Report all the kooks on the Tumblr feminist blogs so as to ensure that none of them will get guns. They won’t have guns anyway (they’re kooky feminists, after all) but this will get them into the government files, and that sort of thing has a life of its own.

    I didn’t make the rules, Mr. Alinsky did, but I can play by them…

  10. ArmyAviator
    January 5th, 2016 @ 11:11 am

    I once had a crazy old Aunt who lived on a farm by herself. She was nutty, in that she thought that “Santa Anna” was going to send agents to her farm, to kidnap her and take her back to Mexico, where she was born! So, she was always suspicious of anyone of Mexican origins, until she was certain that “Santa Anna” had not sent them! Other than that, she was fairly normal and posed no threat to herself or anyone else. She also owned a shotgun and an old army pistol. One night when she was about 80, two Mexican illegals, decided to break-in and take what they wanted. She didn’t have much, but thanks to that old army pistol, she was able to defend her meager possessions. She shot one and sent the other fleeing to the Border Patrol! Today, she would lose her guns under the 0bama rule and would DIE at the hands of illegals.

  11. Matthew W
    January 5th, 2016 @ 11:14 am

    So there will be de facto gun control by having left wing kook drs reporting EVERYONE as ineligible to purchase a gun

  12. Finrod Felagund
    January 5th, 2016 @ 11:24 am
  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    January 5th, 2016 @ 11:31 am

    When Crazy is against the law, RSM goes Outlaw!

  14. RKae
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:04 pm

    Doctors?

    You mean those people who kill 100,000 people a year, due to incompetence?

    You mean those people who are statistically far more dangerous than gun owners?

    You mean those people who hand out the psychotropic drugs that every mass shooter now takes before shooting up a roomful of strangers?

    Those doctors?

  15. Dana
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:07 pm

    This isn’t just using ObysmalCare that is the problem. The HITECH Act, part of the 2009 stimulus bill, mandates that all medical records be converted into electronic form, and specified guidelines for how those records were to be formatted. The (supposed) idea was so that your physician could have access to prior medical records, to provide better treatment, but the result is that those records can be accessed, over the internet, by licensed providers. It won’t be long before the feds are accessing those records to check and see if you are nuts.

  16. NeoWayland
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:08 pm

    Disqus will embed it automatically, all you have to do is put the URL there.

  17. Finrod Felagund
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:18 pm

    Completely offtopic: a study by Harvard Business Review confirms everything that conservatives have been saying about diversity programs– they don’t help women and minorities and they threaten white men:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3385409/Pro-diversity-programs-NOT-help-women-minorities-make-white-men-feel-THREATENED-report-claims.html

  18. MichaelAdams
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:22 pm

    Don’t be pusillanimous Neo. Go straight to the coffee!

  19. Ilion
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:35 pm

    Though, in that case: serves ’em right

  20. NeoWayland
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:43 pm

    I probably should.

    I don’t usually like coffee. Especially not what places like Starbucks do to it. I do have it in the house for guests.

    A while back I read about some cold brew coffee that was supposed to be pretty good. Maybe I’ll hunt up the recipe and try that.

  21. MichaelAdams
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:49 pm

    Starbucks burns their beans, ON PURPOSE! We get Kenya beans from HEB, grind them ourselves, and make the best coffee in three counties. We make it strong, to support an excess of cream, and people who like coffee weep over their cups. And it DO wake us up.

  22. Steve Skubinna
    January 5th, 2016 @ 12:57 pm

    You know what’s really insane? Putting another person’s life above your own, dedicating yourself to die to protect another.

    And if anybody wants to quote from the Bible about “no greater love…” bear in mind that many if not most poets describe love in terms of insanity. In fact, without both love and insanity poetry would not even exist, so they should know.

    Anyway I realize that my observation above means the eventual disarmament of the military. So be it. I propose a more modest beginning, that we disarm the Secret Service, starting with Obama’s personal detail.

  23. RS
    January 5th, 2016 @ 1:07 pm

    The thing is, Obama’s executive action does not void other laws duly enacted by Congress and signed by Presidents, much less state laws which may conflict. I’ve represented health care providers for years and my clients are advised to never release medical information without an specific authorization from the patient or the patients legally authorized representative, because there are too many different laws prohibiting such disclosure to outside sources without authorization, including law enforcement.

    The duty to protect patient confidentiality is on the provider absolutely, and doctors are not stupid. Causing a wrongful SWAT raid on a patient who causally mentioned being situationally depressed is the surest way to bankruptcy or losing one’s malpractice insurance. There have been these ostensible “safe harbors” for years with respect to patients whom a doctor feared was a danger.

    I think this is more window dressing than substance, though I concede the window dressing is undoubtedly a first step in the Progressive agenda to disarm the public.

  24. RS
    January 5th, 2016 @ 1:07 pm

    HTML fail. Bugger.

  25. Finrod Felagund
    January 5th, 2016 @ 1:47 pm

    People that like coffee hate what I do to coffee. It’s been said that I like some coffee with my cream and sugar.

  26. 20thCenturyVole
    January 5th, 2016 @ 2:04 pm

    Well, full employment for all those SWAT teams sitting around polishing their Federally-supplied tanks.

  27. Southern Air Pirate
    January 5th, 2016 @ 2:05 pm

    Just remember it has been common to declare political dissidents as crazy.

    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2800147/

  28. Obama: On Honing Those Communication Skills | Regular Right Guy
    January 5th, 2016 @ 3:09 pm

    […] evidence to the contrary, ISIS is contained, or why Iran should have a nuke, and how we should just trust you and turn in our […]

  29. Steve Skubinna
    January 5th, 2016 @ 3:32 pm

    HA! Now who needs to leave the Internet?

  30. Rodrigo
    January 5th, 2016 @ 3:33 pm

    Leftism is a mental illness, they should all be reported immediately.

  31. malclave
    January 5th, 2016 @ 4:16 pm

    Under the rule, which takes effect next month, for the first time health providers can disclose the information to the background check system without legal repercussions.

    So HIPAA doesn’t apply?

  32. Jason Lee
    January 5th, 2016 @ 4:24 pm

    So will “Heath Care Workers” be reporting disability cheats and illegal drug use as well? Maybe a Trump administration would “enable” health care workers to report illegal aliens.

  33. Mike G.
    January 5th, 2016 @ 4:44 pm

    How in the h-e-double toothpicks did that happen?

  34. Mike G.
    January 5th, 2016 @ 4:45 pm

    Why ruin a good cup o joe with cream and sugar?

  35. RS
    January 5th, 2016 @ 5:42 pm

    I am a very bad person. I will now hang my head in shame. [Insert “Frown Face Thing” Here].

  36. RS
    January 5th, 2016 @ 5:44 pm

    No, it still does. It cannot be repealed by Executive Order. Or, stated differently, no health care provider is going to risk the lawsuit. This is just window dressing for the “true believers.”

  37. Matt_SE
    January 5th, 2016 @ 5:53 pm

    You kids, with your new-fangled Inter-nets. I’m typing this response with a typewriter hooked to a landline.

  38. Matt_SE
    January 5th, 2016 @ 5:55 pm

    I don’t believe your story. You’re probably an agent of Santa Anna.

  39. I told you so! | The First Street Journal.
    January 5th, 2016 @ 5:55 pm

    […] When Crazy Is Against the Law … […]

  40. Matt_SE
    January 5th, 2016 @ 5:58 pm

    As far as disincentivizing mental health care, will crazy people think that far ahead?

  41. Mike
    January 5th, 2016 @ 7:00 pm

    One man’s HIPAA violation is another man’s background check.

  42. Quartermaster
    January 5th, 2016 @ 7:09 pm

    The Physician would be risking action against their state license as well. The left, however, thinks symbolic action is meaningful and is “doing something.”

  43. Quartermaster
    January 5th, 2016 @ 7:12 pm

    Then the details of ex-Presidents and other politicians. Also prohibit any weapons that can not be bought by “civilians.”

  44. Quartermaster
    January 5th, 2016 @ 7:15 pm

    The left hates Nicolo with a passion because he pretty nails them to the wall.

  45. Lulu
    January 5th, 2016 @ 8:30 pm

    The only people I know personally who have seen a therapist vote Democrat so presumably they are anti-gun.

  46. Lulu
    January 5th, 2016 @ 8:35 pm

    Here’s the thing – why would you see a doctor that didn’t share your values? Outside of an emergency you can choose your doctor. My doctors, including dentist, are politically conservative and Christian.

  47. LoneSage
    January 5th, 2016 @ 9:36 pm

    What a Joke!
    The enforcement of existing laws would solve most problems. Of course this creates a catch 22. If we enforced existing laws the vast majority of politicians would be in prison, if they were lucky. An adequate prosecutor and a honest jury would be able to convict many of treason.
    Law abiding citizens are only the problem to the government and other predators.
    Criminals are afraid of the law abiding concealed carry citizen.
    More government doesn’t prevent anything other than individual freedom. I don’t need or want more government.

  48. Tage1960
    January 5th, 2016 @ 11:20 pm

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  49. Quartermaster
    January 6th, 2016 @ 6:23 am

    Spam.

  50. Quartermaster
    January 6th, 2016 @ 6:23 am

    RSM is crazy. Marcotte is insane. The comparison should help.