"-- at the sole discretion of BATFE and the FBI, this bill would compile the largest mega-list of personal information on Americans in existence -- particularly medical and psychological records.
But information on the mega-list could not be used to battle terrorism and crime… only to bar [prohibit] Americans from owning guns.
And, incidentally, it's the medical records themselves, not just a list of names, that would turned over under section 102 (b) (1) (C) (iv). --"
Why back a bill that acknowledges a nonexistent 'power to prohibit'?
This bill actually removes the 98,000 veterans with PTSD that the Clinton Administration added to the ban list, and specifies that medical reasons alone are insufficient reason to add someone to the ban list.
When you say, "nonexistent 'power to prohibit'" I am a bit confused. Are you saying that the federal government lacks authority to disarm those who have been adjudicated mentally defective? Or do you mean that the states lack that authority?
I will agree that when the Framers wrote the Second Amendment, these issues tended not to come up. Partly this was because psychosis was much rarer in early America than it is today. Psychosis rates, for example, increased about 9x from 1880-1980.
Partly this is because most Americans lived in towns of a few hundred people, and you pretty much knew which of your neighbors was a bit odd, and shouldn't have a gun.
Partly this is because the procedures in effect for hospitalization of the mentally ill were much more informal in those days than they are now.