The New York Times (NYT), the New York Daily News (NYDN), and The Huffington Post (HuffPo) are responding to the Senate vote to repeal the Social Security gun ban by accusing GOP lawmakers of helping the mentally ill get guns.
The House of Representatives voted to repeal the Social Security gun ban on February 2, and the Senate followed suit on February 15.
NYT reacted with an editorial titled “Congress Says, Let the Mentally Ill Buy Guns.” The NYDN ran an editorial titled “Gun Crazy: Making It Easier for the Mentally Troubled to Get Guns.” HuffPo ran a column titled “Congress Just Repealed Rules to Keep Guns from the Mentally Ill.”
The NYDN’s story features a large photo of Sandy Hook Elementary School attacker Adam Lanza. This gives the impression that a Social Security ban would have stopped 20-year-old like Lanza from buying a gun at retail. However, Lanza was not a Social Security recipient, and he did not buy his guns at retail. Rather, he stole them. The Social Security gun ban would have done nothing to stop Lanza’s attack, but it would have denied Second Amendment rights to millions of elderly Social Security beneficiaries.
This is why Jeffrey Swanson, Duke University’s psychiatry professor, said former President Barack Obama’s Social Security gun ban targets the “vulnerable” rather than the dangerous.
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.
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