... Now, the supporters of the McCarthy bill claim that military veterans -- who have been denied their Second Amendment rights -- could get their rights restored. But this is a very nebulous promise.

The reason is that Section 101(c)(1)(C) of the bill provides explicitly that a psychiatrist or psychologist diagnosis is enough to ban a person for ever owning a gun as long as it's predicated on a microscopic risk that a person could be a danger to himself or others. (Please be sure to read the NOTE below for more details on this.)

How many psychiatrists are going to deny that a veteran suffering from PTS doesn't possess a MICROSCOPIC RISK that he could be a danger to himself or others?

And even if they can clear the psychiatrist hurdle, we're still looking at thousands of dollars for lawyers, court fees, etc. And then, when veterans have done everything they can possibly do to clear their name, there is still the Schumer amendment in federal law which prevents the BATFE from restoring the rights of individuals who are barred from purchasing firearms. If that amendment is not repealed, then it doesn't matter if your state stops sending your name for inclusion in the FBI's NICS system... you are still going to be a disqualified purchaser when you try to buy a gun.

So get the irony. Senator Schumer is the one who is leading the charge in the Senate to pass the McCarthy bill, and he is "generously" offering military veterans the opportunity to clear their names, even though it's been HIS AMENDMENT that has prevented honest gun owners from getting their rights back under a similar procedure created in 1986!

But there's still another irony. Before this bill, it was very debatable (in legal terms) whether the military vets with PTS should have been added into the NICS system... and yet many of them were -- even though there was NO statutory authority to do so. Before this bill, there were provisions in the law to get one's name cleared, and yet Schumer made it impossible for these military vets to do so.

Now, the McCarthy bill (combined with federal regulations) makes it unmistakably clear that military vets with Post Traumatic Stress SHOULD BE ADDED as prohibited persons on the basis of a "diagnosis." Are these vets now going to find it any easier to get their names cleared (when the law says they should be on the list) if they were finding it difficult to do so before (when the law said they shouldn't)?

Add to this the Schumer amendment (mentioned above). The McCarthy bill does nothing to repeal the Schumer amendment, which means that military veterans with PTS are going to find it impossible to get their rights restored!

Do you see how Congress is slowly (and quietly) sweeping more and more innocent people into the same category as murderers and rapists? First, anti-gun politicians get a toe hold by getting innocuous sounding language into the federal code. Then they come back years later to twist those words into the most contorted way possible. ...