Glenn Beck was outraged by President Obama’s executive action to expand background checks for gun buyers and predictably spent several minutes on his radio program today spinning out a conspiracy theory about how this will now lead to a new black market filled with doctors and psychiatrists who will refuse to cooperate with the new mandates.
Citing an announcement by the Department of Health and Human Services that it had removed “unnecessary legal barriers under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule” that had prevented states from reporting crucial information about individuals “who have been involuntarily committed to a mental institution or otherwise have been determined by a lawful authority to be a danger to themselves or others or to lack the mental capacity to manage their own affairs” to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, Beck declared that Obama is really attempting to take guns away from anyone who seeks any sort of mental health treatment or even has a family member who seeks treatment for something like ADD.
Of course, the HHS explicitly explained that “seeking help for mental health problems or getting treatment does not make someone legally prohibited from having a firearm, and nothing in this proposed rule changes that,” but Beck didn’t care, instead insisting that this change will lead to people refusing to seek treatment for mental health issues, which will in turn lead to more suicides and create a black market for mental health treatment.
“Now, if you’re a gun owner and you know that the government is going to find out that your son or daughter or you or your wife, they’re going in for medication for depression or whatever,” Beck asserted, “and you know that once that’s reported, the government will come in and take your guns, how many people are going to say, ‘No, no, no, let’s not go to a doctor.'”
“You’re going to see depression, suicide and everything else” skyrocket, Beck claimed. “Think of the things now that this is going to create black markets for. Black market doctors; this will become back alley medicine for people with depression, people with kids who are having problems, they will look for doctors who will not report anything. This is nuts. Absolutely nuts.”
