Debate Over VA Trampling Veterans’ Gun Rights Far from Over

The Department of Veterans Affairs is, ostensibly, the part of the United States government that’s supposed to look out for veterans. They provide all the benefits veterans are entitled to as a result of their service. One would imagine they’re basically the thank you from a grateful nation veterans see while they’re still living.

Of course, if you’re a veteran, you know that the truth is a lot more complex than that. 

It’s especially true if the VA decides unilaterally to strip you of your right to keep and bear arms, which has happened. While we’ve talked about it before, and the program has been on pause for nearly a year, the debate over the VA doing such things is far from over.

One lawmaker called the protection of veterans from self-harm while also ensuring their Second Amendment rights “a tricky situation.”

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) most recent report, in 2022, firearms were used in 64.9% of veterans’ deaths by suicide. It was a jump of 4% from the year before.

However, an effort to protect such veterans from firearm-related self-harm has prompted critics to accuse the VA of depriving some veterans of their constitutional rights.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs seems to fail to give veterans any due process before violating their constitutional right to bear arms,” said House Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs Chairman Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-Texas) who said 250,000 veterans have been affected.

“We’re not a substandard group of citizens. We deserve the same rights and the due process as any other citizens of America,” said James McCormick, of the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

At the heart of the issue is that the VA, when they would appoint someone to serve as a fiduciary for a veteran, would then forward that veteran’s information to NICS, saying they were deemed incompetent to own a firearm.

Now, many people who have fiduciaries appointed for them are, in fact, people who probably should be deemed incompetent by the courts. In fact, some of them already were and the VA is just acting as the court directed.

But not all of them are, necessarily.

More to the point, though, those who haven’t been adjudicated by a court shouldn’t be added to anything that would deny the veteran in question their right to keep and bear arms. That’s not something for the VA to decide on its own. No appointed bureaucrat should have the right to decide that because someone might need help with their financial affairs, they should be denied their constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

A right many of them fought and bled for.

Of course, let’s also not forget about the veterans’ suicide numbers and talk of “self-harm.”

Most of the veterans who take their lives may have profound issues, but what most of them probably don’t have are fiduciaries. Even if the practice were reinstated today, it’s unlikely there would be any real changes because, as I said, they’re not people with fiduciaries in the first place. Depression and the like aren’t grounds for a fiduciary under the VA’s guidelines, and those are the people who tend to take their own lives.

But this is nothing more than an attempt to make it look like this practice is about saving lives rather than simply denying people their right to keep and bear arms.