From PennLive

JERSEY SHORE – A political action committee that supports the Second Amendment has joined the effort of a military veteran from Lycoming County who is seeking restoration of his gun rights.

Firearm Owners Against Crime filed a friend of the court brief in U.S. Middle District Court t his past week in support of Victor W. Welshans, from the Jersey Shore area.

The FOAC, based in McMurray, Washington County, describes itself as non-partisan, non-connected PAC organized to provide tools and information necessary to protect he freedom to possess arms. It claims to have more than 1,600 members.

“I think it is great,” Welshans said about the support in his suit against Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Welshans, 61, says he wants to purchase a gun to shoot ground hogs that damage the garden on his farm but can’t because in 1999 he spent four days in a mental unit of Williamsport hospital.

He says he voluntarily committed himself for treatment of depression, although documents, which he says are incorrect, state that the admission was involuntary.

The treating physician in his discharge summary stated Welshans was well enough for military duty and to return work.

He spent 26 years in the military, including a year in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, and retired from the Postal Service after 33 years.

Lycoming County Judge Dudley N. Anderson in December 2016 restored his gun rights in Pennsylvania but the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 prevents him from buying the rifle.

FOAC in its filing cites court decisions it claims show a mental health examination and treatment does not trigger a prohibition on possessing a weapon.

It points out the Gun Control Act does not define “committed to a mental institution” while the Bureau of Alcohol, Firearms and Tobacco states it means a formal commitment by a court, board, commission or other lawful authority.

The defendants seem to contend an involuntary commitment for an emergency mental health examination results in a permanent deprivation of Second Amendment rights, the FOAC brief states.

There is no evidence Congress intended an individual who was committed on one isolated and temporary occasion be stripped of his right to keep and bear arms, the document states.

Welshans is not mentally ill and has not had a relapse since the 1999 incident, FOAC says.

His due process rights were violated in 1991 because all it took to have him committed was a doctor’s signature, it claims.

He was not permitted to have an attorney or advised of the consequences of the commitment, it says.

Welshans claims he was unaware he could not possess a firearm until 2015 when he attempted to buy a rifle.