Obama’s cowardly backdoor gun confiscation…starts with those who’ve risked their lives defending our rights.

In what amounts to a backdoor gun grab, two Senate Republicans are demanding to know why the VA stripped 260,000 veterans of their Second Amendment rights.

As of December, the VA has reported 260,381 individuals to the FBI as “mentally defective” and therefore not permitted to purchase a gun, Guns.com is reporting.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa lawmaker who is currently the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, finds this unacceptable.

“Our military heroes risked their lives to protect and defend this country and all that we stand for, including our most basic constitutional rights,” said Grassley in a statement. “Now the very agency created to serve them is jeopardizing their Second Amendment rights through an erroneous reading of gun regulations. The VA’s careless approach to our veterans’ constitutional rights is disgraceful.”

In an effort to fix the issue, Grassley, along with Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., penned a letter to VA Secretary Robert McDonald last week and another to the subcommittee over the agency’s funding, questioning the practice.

Making a due process argument, the lawmakers argue the VA uses the fiduciary trustee status of a veteran to regulate firearms possession without ever seeking to find out if the service member is a danger to themselves or others.

“The use of the VA regulation, adopted for a totally unrelated purpose, is suspect, especially in light of the Supreme Court holding that the Second Amendment is a fundamental right,” reads the letter to McDonald. “That holding changed the legal calculus by which a regulatory scheme can survive constitutional scrutiny and it is not clear how these regulations would fare under that increased scrutiny.” Via: DownTrend