House Republicans Plan Vote to Kill Obama’s Social Security Gun Ban

GOP leaders will use a fast-track congressional process to kill an anti-gun regulation issued by former President Barack Obama shortly before he left office.

Reuters quotes 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.”  This will allow the passage of resolutions to “wipe out [certain] entire regulations” put in place by Obama and his administration, the Social Security gun ban among them.

The House GOP plans to avail itself of the Congressional Review Act, via which “Congress can use simple majority votes to stop recent regulations in their tracks.” The House GOP is expected to target “rules that became final after May 31, [2016],” including the Social Security gun ban, new environmental regulations, an “anti-bribery rule aimed at U.S. resource companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp and Chevron Corp,” and regulations that make coal mining more difficult.

Representative Greg Walden (R-OR-2) noted that the Democrats cannot stop these reversals if Republicans stick together. Because “the resolutions only require simple majorities to pass, they will probably sail through the House and then pass the Senate, where Democrats, the minority party, cannot mount a filibuster against them.”

Of all the regulations on the chopping block this week, the Social Security gun ban stands out as especially egregious. The Obama administration fashioned it in a way that gives the Social Security Administration (SSA) the ability to bar certain beneficiaries from buying guns based on a need for help in managing their finances.

In July 2015 the Los Angeles Times reported that as many as “4.2 million” Social Security beneficiaries receive help managing their finances. These are millions of beneficiaries who could potentially be turned over to the NICS system and barred from purchasing firearms, should the Social Security gun ban remain.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.