With House Passage of Veteran Firearm Bill, Brady Warns of Dire Harms to Vulnerable Veterans and Their Families

H.R. 1401 would allow veterans with severe mental health issues access to firearms, making permanent a recent unilateral VA decision and proposed ATF rule

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 21, 2026 — Today, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 216-201 to pass H.R. 1401, the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act. If enacted, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will be prohibited from reporting any VA beneficiaries to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) on the basis of a mental incompetency determination, regardless of their underlying condition, without a separate judicial finding that such beneficiary is a danger to themselves or others. Furthermore, the bill retroactively removes all beneficiaries who had been reported to NICS by VA unless they had been separately found by a court to be a danger to themselves or others. The bill provides no resources or direction to VA to seek such determinations.

The passage of this bill comes after the VA in March unilaterally vacated the records of over 90,000 individuals from NICS without regard for their underlying conditions and without any assessment of  dangerousness. Such veterans and their beneficiaries, whom the VA describes as the “most vulnerable,” are assigned a fiduciary after a mental incompetency determination because the “medical evidence is clear, convincing and leaves no doubt as to the person’s inability to manage their affairs.” Since VA’s determinations meet the legal standard of “mental defective” under the Gun Control Act of 1968, that information was until recently shared with NICS to prevent the individual from purchasing a firearm.

Kris Brown, President of Brady, said:

This bill’s supporters will claim it ‘honors’ those who served, but I can’t think of a single action that shows a greater lack of respect or care for the men and women who wore the uniform and their families than equipping people who suffer from extreme mental health challenges and have elevated suicide rates with the means to hurt themselves or others. As the Trump administration itself admits in a proposed rule similarly promoting firearm access for this vulnerable group of veterans, the public safety risks could be ‘minimal, or may be considerably greater’ – ‘up to and including potential mass casualty events.’

In reality, this bill was crafted to comply with the desires of the gun lobby and their extremist friends and ignores the catastrophic and irreversible repercussions for veterans, their families and loved ones who now have to get a court to determine them ‘dangerous,’ and the integrity and very purpose of our Brady Background Check system to keep firearms out of the hands of those who pose a danger to themselves or others. The priorities of the supporters of this bill are entirely backward, and veterans who have protected our freedoms will lose their lives as a result.