[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 27 (Wednesday, February 15, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Page S1216]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION RULE

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the potential repeal 
of the Social Security Administration's rule that helps keep guns out 
of the hands of those with a severe mental illness. I voted no.
  First, I want to point out that this rule only addresses a 
shortcoming in the existing background check law that Congress passed 
legislation to address. We use the National Instant Criminal Background 
Check system to prevent criminals and the adjudicated mentally ill from 
purchasing firearms.
  In order for the FBI to have access to all the data they need to run 
those background checks, Congress passed the NICS Improvement Act in 
2007--in bipartisan fashion, signed into law by President George W. 
Bush, hardly a gun safety activist--to instruct Federal agencies to 
send information to the NICS system about criminal records and mental 
illness.
  This rule at the Social Security Administration is simply 
implementing that bipartisan law.
  Second, let me underscore the point, this rule only applies to those 
who have severe mental health disorders, like schizophrenia. These are 
folks who, because of their disorder need assistance managing their own 
affairs and are so severely impaired that they cannot hold down a full-
time job. It simply requires the Social Security Administration to pass 
that data on to the NICS background check system so the FBI can stop 
gun sales to the seriously mentally ill.
  It doesn't get much more common sense than that.
  Frankly, I find it absurd that the Republicans have chosen to repeal 
this rule as one of their first priorities in this Congress.
  Does the Republican majority really think it is wise, as my colleague 
from Connecticut asked, that folks who are so severely mentally ill 
that they cannot work and require assistance managing their finances 
should be assumed to be able to responsibly own and protect a gun?
  Mental illness is a serious topic. We have debated it many times in 
this body--how to better provide for treatment, how to decrease the 
stigma surrounding it--but I don't remember the part where we debated 
whether it was wise or not to allow folks with a severe, almost 
incapacitating, mental illness to easily purchase a gun.
  Gun violence takes far too many lives each year. At the very, very 
least, we should be doing all that we can to prevent criminals, 
potential terrorists, and the adjudicated mentally ill from purchasing 
firearms; yet Republicans consistently line up behind the NRA to block 
or repeal policies that would do those things--even though 8 or 9 out 
of every 10 Americans supports them, though a vast majority of 
gunowners support them.
  Whenever Republicans talk about gun violence, they say, ``Let's 
enforce the laws on the books!'' Well, as I mentioned, this regulation 
does just that; it implements the bipartisan 2007 NICS Improvement Act 
that Republican President George W. Bush signed into law.
  Today, Republicans are calling their own bluff; they are not 
interested in enforcing the laws on the books--they just want to repeal 
them, even when that puts innocent American lives at risk.
  If Republicans have a problem with this rule, they should have pushed 
the Social Security Administration to modify it, rather than repealing 
it outright and blocking any similar rulemaking on the subject, which 
is what this CRA would do.
  Thank you.

                          ____________________