Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) shouted out what he called “bad news” on a “terrible new gun policy” that’s “buried in the appropriations bill being voted on this week.”
The rider, tucked into $467.5 billion spending bill by House Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mike Bost (R-IL) and his Senate Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Jon Tester (D-MT) also drew notice from the White House, which regretted its inclusion but pushed for Congress to pass the bill.
Murphy says the new provision ends three decades of legislation that curtailed gun ownership by mentally ill veterans, warning that the new appropriations bill allows “veterans judged by the VA to be mentally incompetent to buy guns.”
Murphy asserts that the bill would increase the danger that mentally unfit veterans pose to others, as a tragic mass shooting in Maine last fall painfully demonstrated, but also potentially the danger to themselves.
“These are very very mentally ill veterans,” Murphy writes, “those at the highest risk of suicide.”
Tester sees it from the other side, calling the provision a “win for Second Amendment rights and for veterans who have made it clear that VA’s current practice is pushing some folks away from accessing the mental health care they need out of fear their firearms will be seized.”
Veterans who have been found by the VA to be mentally unfit and unable to take care of their finances have been banned from purchasing firearms. If the bill passes, these veterans will have the opportunity to ask a judge to decide.
3/ I can’t sugarcoat this: this provision – which could result in 20,000 new seriously mentally ill individuals being able to buy guns each year – will be a death sentence for many.
— Chris Murphy 🟧 (@ChrisMurphyCT) March 6, 2024
It’s unacceptable this provision was pushed by Republicans. Democrats shouldn’t have acquiesced.
“This provision – which could result in 20,000 new seriously mentally ill individuals being able to buy guns each year – will be a death sentence for many,” Murphy says.
Murphy is in an unusual position, having at first voted for the bill he now castigates, saying he’d been “hopeful [he] could later eliminate or modify the provision.” Now he says: “I was unsuccessful and now I cannot vote for final passage. Not with this many lives in the balance.”
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