Depriving Our Veterans of Their Constitutional Rights: An Analysis of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Practice of Stripping Veterans of Their Second Amendment Rights and Our Nation’s Response

This Article does not argue that veterans who have been adjudicated mentally incompetent by a court after a hearing or have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility should be permitted to purchase or possess firearms. However, this Article does compare the VA’s determination of “financial incompetency” to other determinations of “mental defectiveness,” demonstrating that the VA’s standards do not rise to the level of “adjudicat[ing] [the veteran] a mental defective” in a manner sufficient for him to be stripped of his constitutional rights. This Article also argues that including veterans determined financially incompetent for VA purposes on a list of persons unable to exercise their Second Amendment rights is an unconstitutional deprivation of these rights which must be remedied for all affected veterans, past and future.