A bill by U.S. Sen. Richard Burr would prevent veterans from being declared mentally unfit to own a gun.

Since the Virginia Tech shootings last year, Congress and several states have sought to tighten rules on who can legally buy a gun, but Burr's bill would prevent the federal veterans agency from declaring veterans "mentally defective" on its own.

Instead, judges, magistrates or other judicial authorities would have to do it.

Burr said that some veterans were added to the list not because they were a risk but because the Department of Veterans Affairs assigned them guardians to oversee their finances.

"This is a constitutional issue," he said. The database is for criminals, "not for folks who have trouble handling their own affairs."

The National Rifle Association and several veterans groups back Burr, but gun control-organizations argue that veterans have higher rates of suicide than non-veterans and might be more at risk. (N&O) 

U.S. Sen. Richard Burr joined his Democratic colleague on the Senate Veteran Affairs committee today in calling for an independent investigation into a veterans hospital in Texas and its diagnoses of PTSD.

Burr, of Winston-Salem, is the top Republican on the committee. He and Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, the panel’s chairman, said the Inspector General for the Veteran Affairs department needs to look into diagnoses at the medical center in Temple, Texas, reports Barb Barrett.

There, an employee recently sent out an e-mail suggesting that workers not diagnose post-praumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, among patients.

“It is troubling if even one person at VA would encourage other employees to make anything other than a completely honest health assessment of our veterans,” Burr said. “These allegations are serious.”

John Edwards and Fox commentator Bill O'Reilly are mixing it up again.

O’Reilly, host of "The O'Reilly Factor," questioned Edwards' assertion that 200,000 veterans "will go to sleep under and bridges and on grates" because they are homeless tonight, Rob Christensen reports.

"They may be out there, but there's not many of them out there. Okay," O'Reilly said. "If you know where's a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it."

Edwards responded with a statement: "For someone who spends a lot of time shouting about patriotism, you would think he would be outraged by the treatment of our homeless veterans. How many more will it take before we wake up and solve this crisis?"

The Edwards campaign cited a November study by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. A spokeswoman for the alliance said they got their information from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs for the year 2006.

The VA report said "about one-third of the adult homeless population have served their country in the Armed Services. Current population estimates suggest that about 195,000 veterans are homeless on any given night and perhaps twice as many experience homelessness at some point during the course of a year."

The report said about 45 percent of the homeless vets suffer from mental illness and slightly more than 70 percent suffer from alcohol or other drug abuse problems.

Correction: An earlier version of this post misstated the year.