Rollback of Gun Control Rule Highlights Regulatory Obstacles

Lois Beckett wrote a piece in The Guardian in which she aims to highlight issues with Obama's gun law regarding the mentally ill that put opposition to the law uncharacteristically on the side of science, but ultimately exposes a fundamental flaw in establishing regulatory control that is often overlooked. The Obama rule "would have disqualified from gun ownership an estimated 75,000 people who have mental illnesses or disabilities and are assigned a representative to manage their social security benefits." Beckett quotes psychiatrist Paul Appplebaum:

The Obama rule “is fundamentally not a rational policy”, said Paul Appelbaum, a psychiatrist who directs the law, ethics and psychiatry division at Columbia University. “It’s not a rule that would be very likely to make us safer.” The people targeted by the rule “are not a particularly high-risk group for violent behavior”, Appelbaum said. “Gun control stirs up strong emotions, and there are a lot of people who will support anything that they perceive as reducing access to weapons by anyone... There are a lot of people on the other side, who will support anybody having access to weapons by any reasons whatsoever... in this case, “the rationality of the regulation itself is sort of lost in the furore.”(sic)

The idea here is that anyone so debilitated, as to need the assistance of another person to act as a legal guardian to receive and manage their Social Security money, isn't going to be going into gun shows or dealer stores to purchase a weapon. And that's an argument with merit. But the scope of that rule unmasks the problem with implementing regulatory control where there wasn't much to begin with. Obama basically used this rule as an entry point to control, which would be fine-tuned later on, once people had gotten used to having the rule. If that feels familiar, it's because it's the same approach used to implement Obamacare. Here was the goal with implementing Obamacare:

1. Pass the law.
2. Get funds flowing into the system as quickly as possible, so people are used to it before Obama's first term is up.
3. Get as many people signed up into the system as quickly as possible. The more users, the better, before the first term is up.
4. Fight off any legal challenges as quickly as possible, to prevent any delay of flooding the exchanges with customers.

Obama needed to get people into the system as early and as quickly as possible - a problematic goal exacerbated by the abject failure to get the online system up and running right away - because, if he didn't win re-election in 2012, he wanted the system up and running , and filled with customers, to make it as difficult as possible to dismantle it. The longer the system ran, the more people would get used to it, the less likely they would be to call for it's repeal, and the more difficult it would be to get rid of it without taking away people's health care.

And it feels like this was the goal with the gun control law. If the law is already in the system, it can be tweaked or refined later, to better articulate the intentions. The mental conditions of the people in this law was probably seen as so obvious as to not have any intentions toward purchasing a weapon that there would be no reason to fight back on it. Who cares about a law that no one it's aimed at could, or would, ever violate? That's any easy law to dismiss, right? Let it pass, if it makes Obama feel like he's done something... And later on, of course, there's an existing law that's ripe for refinement that can be tweaked toward an end that was intended all along.

It's easy to smack Obama down for attempting to do it this way, but that's what the obstructionist Republican Congress left him with, as well as the NRA. Obama wasn't just fighting a Congress that wouldn't budge on anything, he was dealing with Wayne LaPierre being unmovable in any way toward some form of regulation that would protect 2nd Amendment rights, but make it harder for criminals or emotionally broken people to get their hands on weapons to do harm. LaPierre and the NRA have been steadfast in their obtuse attitude toward gun violence and mass killings, which is basically the metaphorical sticking of fingers in their ears and shouting "LaLaLaLaLaLa I can't HEAR you...!" They never offer any tangible suggestions for getting control of the problem, just platitudes about how sad they are for "yet another tragic loss, we offer our sincerest condolences to the family in this, their time of heartache, and join the NRA now by going to our website..."

So of course Obama would invest in a rule so benign it would never need to be enforced, because that's how things get done these days. You have to sneak something by everyone and hope they don't pay too much attention to it, lest they burn a glial cell or two and realize the true intentions. Democrats likely knew the intention, which is why they are fighting to keep it. They need it as an entry point for some time down the line. Lose it, and they'd have to find another way.

The ideal method needed here would involve HIPAA. And the early signs of moving in that direction are already here. "On January 4, 2016, HHS moved forward on the Administration’s commitment to modify the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule to expressly permit certain covered entities to disclose to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) the identities of those individuals who, for mental health reasons, already are prohibited by Federal law from having a firearm." The intention is already heading that way. What we need is the NRA and Congress to help come up with a plan that maintains rights, but accomplishes the goal. But they have to be willing to help, rather than issuing blanket denials to be of any assistance while people are dying, then implying that, if only the eight-year olds in Newtown were packing...