Today, I met with a client who was denied by FBI / PSP because of, as stated on the denial, “Veterans Affairs Administration.”

Although I’ve vociferously spoken out against the VA being able to strip individuals’ Second Amendment rights, in all honesty, until today, I had not seen a case where a veteran had actually been denied in the absence of an actual involuntary mental health commitment or formal adjudication of incompetence. Today, that all changed.

While past stories discuss denying a veteran, where the veteran elected to have a third-party handle his/her financial affairs (and of course, I have to question how someone who is deemed to be “incompetent” can execute a form competently…but I digress), my client’s denial is far more egregious – as if, I ever thought I could see such a situation.

In my client’s situation, he handles all of his own finances. The VA does not dispute this. Rather, when I finally got a representative from the VA on the line, she informed us that the VA, on its own initiative, placed him into “supervised direct payment status”. When I inquired as to what “supervised direct payment status” was, the representative stated that it is where the veteran handles his/her own financial affairs but they “watch the veteran’s financial accounts.” While the VA contended that they sent out a letter about this status being imposed on my client, my client never received such a letter and they acknowledged that it does not mention anything about the loss of the veteran’s Second Amendment rights, but that the VA has been imposing such since 2013.

No due process is provided. The representative acknowledged that my client never received a hearing and that the determination that my client was incompetent was made solely by a VA official reviewing his case. She stated that he could have appealed the determination when he received the original letter, but the time has since past to appeal. Remember, this is the letter that my client never received and which makes no mention of the loss of one’s Second Amendment rights…

While they have reluctantly agreed to send my client copies of the putative letter that they allegedly previously sent, they refused to provide his entire file, even at my request. This is the new Veteran Affairs Administration, folks. We now treat our illegal immigrants with more respect and benefits than our own veterans. This is an absolute disgrace and the VA’s policies and procedures need to be immediately reversed. Of course, we’re all aware that such is unlikely if former Secretary Clinton is elected…