Is there a connection between healthcare reform and gun rights?

Christian Science Monitor ^ | 21 August, 2009 | Staff

[marktwain]

Many people were startled to see a man bring an AR-15 assault rifle to the vicinity of a presidential town hall on healthcare in Phoenix on Monday. His intent, he told reporters, was to show his willingness to “forcefully resist” an overreaching government.

He broke no laws, police say, and he was not a threat to the president. But it turns out there’s an actual connection between gun rights and healthcare reform, at least according to one gun lobby.

Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt says that a Democrat-sponsored government-run healthcare system with a centralized patient record database could keep guns out of the hands of “gazillions” of lawful Americans.

“If this becomes law, there’s no place to escape” if the government wanted to use federal medical records to deem citizens “medically unfit” to carry a gun, says Mr. Pratt. “No trial, no due process, just gone.”

Pratt’s critics agree there are some legitimate privacy concerns around having a central medical data repository.

But they point to an independent 2008 report showing that 90 percent of so-called disqualifying records for a gun purchase are not in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). A central medical records system could, therefore, help enforce federal laws that ban those who have been adjudicated as a “mental defective” or who have spent time in a mental institution from buying a gun.

Making sure that those who don’t qualify for gun ownership under federal law are identified “is the public’s business,” says Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, in Washington.

-------------------cut---------------------------

At the same time, concerns about issues such as the interplay between medical privacy and gun rights don’t necessarily amount to paranoia by gun owners, some legal scholars say.

[marktwain]

Not a great article, but at least it treats the concerns as legitimate.

[MNJohnnie]

I define Liberalism as a mental disease. Therefore all Democrats and other fascist fellow travelers should be banned from buying a gun under Federal law.

See the slippery slope here NOW unChristian Monitor?

[TLEIBY308]

They will claim guns are costing the health care system too much and will say they must go.

[pabianice]

In the 1990s, Massachusetts declared guns "a defective product and a public safety hazard" and then banned 90% of them from the state. MA now has an "approved list of guns," generated by the smarmy AG's office, that simply outlaws most handguns and many long guns. This is coming to YOUR state under Obamacare. Don't say I didn't warn you.

[mathurine]

I suppose we need only to look at the various ways the federal government uses highway money to jerk the states around on things like drinking age and predict that the time is not far off when they will use the medical system to jerk everyone around.

[JimRed]

It would be interesting to know how many MA politicos owned stock in the companies that manufacture or distribute the “approved” firearms at the time they passed the law!

Make the list, buy the stock, collect the gains.

[TurtleUp]

I define Liberalism as a mental disease. Therefore all Democrats and other fascist fellow travelers should be banned from buying a gun under Federal law.

Not relevant. They are banned from carrying firearms by their own choice. They count on the conservatives in the police forces, conservatives in the community, and conservatives in the military to enforce their tyrannical orders once they take power. I think they are beginning to wonder if that is going to work out for them.

[PLMerite]

Under Obamacare, banning firearms will be a “public health issue.”

Think of how many democrat voters are killed with firearms every year.