FBI worked secretly with hospitals to strip US citizens’ gun rights, documents show
According to the Washington Examiner, a cache of internal documents reveals that the FBI conspired with hospitals and medical centres to deny citizens their right to possess, buy, or use firearms.
The FBI worked closely with U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Secret Service behind closed doors, without congressional approval. Records show that the FBI used internal forms to remove gun rights from over twenty-six people. Newly obtained emails and documents reveal how the FBI received help from medical facilities in order to waive gun rights for at least five individuals, following the December 2022 revelations by the Washington Examiner.
Aidan Johnston, federal affairs director at Gun Owners of America, said that any evidence of private entities working with federal agents to deprive Americans of their rights should alarm the public and demand answers. Johnston is a firearms rights organization. “This is the latest frightening example of illegal NICS self submission form being used in nefarious manners, and those who used them to violate the trust of the public must be held accountable.”
The FBI provided forms to U.S citizens in their homes and other locations, which registered them with the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. This was previously reported by the Washington Examiner. However, new records show that the FBI used the form as far back as 2011.
|
The forms asked for signatories to identify themselves as a “danger” and to declare that they lack the “mental capacity to contract their lives.” First Amendment lawyers and members have raised concerns about the FBI’s existence, including Sen. MarshaBlackburn (R.TN), House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R.OH), and Reps. Dan Bishop and Andrew Clyde.
“It really speaks about the rogue nature of ‘Deep State mentality,” Ken Cuccinelli (an ex-Department of Homeland Security official under Trump’s administration) told the Washington Examiner.
Gun Owners of America received new documents through Freedom of Information Act. These documents shed light on the use of gun forms in New Hampshire, Delaware and Massachusetts. They also provided signatory records to FBI. These forms date back to 2011, the year that the FBI declared they were no longer being used.
The 2011 document, which dates FBI’s actions five years earlier than previously reported, was shared by Oklahoma’s Northwest Center for Behavioral Healthcare, a mental healthcare clinic. The FBI has redacted the name of the signatory, as with other forms.
According to documents, the form was completed in November 2011 and sent by the clinic to the FBI. The FBI also revealed the identity of a medical professional who signed the form. They also disclosed their state license number. The forms relating to Oklahoma are not accompanied by any investigative records, so it is unclear why the individual lost their gun rights.
One signatory signed a form in April 2017 following coordination between Rockford Center (a private mental health organization in Newark, Delaware) and the FBI. Documents show that the signatory was deemed “a danger to himself and others” but was not involuntarily committed to treatment or adjudged a “mental defect.”
The Gun Control Act of 1968 is a federal law that regulates firearm ownership. It does not allow citizens to declare themselves unfit to possess guns. However, it states that anyone who has been “adjudicated mentally defective” or committed to a mental institution could be banned from owning firearms.
Clyde stated that “These new revelations further prove that the FBI has used deeply troubling tactics to erode Americans’ Second Amendment freedoms.” Clyde spoke to the Washington Examiner. The FBI is using NICS forms to further the Left’s dangerous agenda to disarm our country and end our Second Amendment liberties. Congress should investigate the troubling matter thoroughly and hold all non-elected anti-gun bureaucrats responsible for making Americans give up their constitutional right to keep, bear and bear arms.
New Hampshire Hospital was another medical center that cooperated with the FBI, according to documents. This hospital is state-backed, and offers inpatient psychiatric care.
The hospital completed a sheet in September 2019 detailing how a patient had signed the FBI form. The bureau was sent the two-page hospital sheet (which does not include the patient’s name)
According to Kathy Remillard, spokesperson for the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services to the Washington Examiner, “The documents that you refer are documents used to release patient records to another entity at the patient’s request.” The patient’s guardian or parent must approve and request the hospital share information to allow the hospital to send records on to another entity. The Department doesn’t take a position about the patient’s request or the reason behind it.
Other facilities that cooperated with the FBI were the Massachusetts-based Holy Family Hospital which falls under the major network Steward Health Care and Stoneham Medical Group, Stoneham, Massachusetts.
According to records, the February 2019 signatory of the Holy Family form was “involuntarily committed to treatment” and the bureau “brought the form to hospital. Documents show that the man signed the form and “agreed” to receive treatment.
One of the Holy Family forms includes a reference to Section 12 Massachusetts law, which states that patients with “a possibility of serious harm due to mental illness” may be brought against their will to a hospital within three days.
According to records, the other Massachusetts form was completed in 2014. It was signed, like other forms, by a physician who claimed that the patient had sufficient mental capacity to complete it.
Second Amendment lawyers claim that this is a contradiction, as it is not clear how anyone could be ineligible to possess guns but still be able to waive their gun rights.
John Harris, an attorney and director of the Tennessee Firearms Association in September, asked John Harris: “How could such unilateral waiver of constitutionally protected rights give rise to a basis or form the basis of a valid criminal conviction?” “Could someone, on the other hand, waive their right to vote or run and have that enforced?”
The W
No Comments