"See a shrink, lose your guns"

The Obamacare champions at the Department of Health and Human Services are engineering a backdoor approach to gun control, one that would strip away your medical privacy rights to take a grab at your gun rights.

Gun Owners of America has issued an alert which says, in part:

Understand a couple of things:  First, the standard which your doctor would use to turn you in is embodied in Clinton-era ATF language and in the anti-gun Veterans Disarmament Act of 2007. Specifically, you doctor would "drop a dime" on you if he suspected you were even a slight "danger to yourself of others" or were "unable to manage your financial affairs." 

So if they say you can't balance your checkbook, then you lose your constitutional rights. 

But there's another problem:  The day these regulations become law, lawyers will be lining up to sue "deep-pocket" psychiatrists for every case where they failed to turn in a patient to NICS - if the patient subsequently engages in a horrific act. 

The bottom line?  Any psychiatrist who failed to report all of his patients to the NICS system risks losing everything if any of them engages in harmful conduct.  Soon the rule of thumb will be: See a shrink; lose your guns. 

And the regulations will apply to private, as well as government-employed psychiatrists.

The proposed HHS remaking is now in a required public comment period. GOA advises it's time to speak out:

ACTION: Go to the Federal Register - at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2013-04-23/pdf/2013-09602.pdf - and respond to the regs entitled “HIPAA Privacy Rule and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).”