Good day all. One of the issues the gun control clowns refuse to talk about are convicted criminals getting guns. In pretty much every case, these criminals were convicted of some pretty serious and probably violent crimes. This doesn’t slow them down when they decide they need a gun.
Criminals like this just buy the guns “On the street” or they steal them. They then use them to commit additional violent crimes. However, there is another class of convicted felon who may want to get a gun for personal defense. The crimes they were convicted of were not violent in any way.
They might have embezzled money, cheated on their taxes, or made some sort of paperwork error that some overzealous prosecutor uses to make political points. These people generally complete their sentences and stay on the right side of the law. However, they too have lost their 2nd Amendment rights.
This happened to a man who some 30 years ago, committed food stamp fraud. He didn’t commit a violent crime, did not use a weapon in the commission of the crime and fully completed his sentence and paid his debt to society. Recently, he decided to buy a gun. He went to a gun store, filled out the ATF Form 4473 and, unlike Hunter Biden, didn’t lie on the form. He was, of course, denied.
This led the man to look into the laws that deny a convicted felon the right to keep and bear arms. He decided that this was unconstitutional and filed suit to have this corrected. He has been successful. Here are the details from Town Hall:
A federal appeals court ruled that a law barring individuals with a felony from owning firearms is unconstitutional on Monday, December 23rd. Bryan Range was convicted of food stamp fraud about 30 years ago. He was subsequently prohibited from owning a gun due to the severity of his crime.
Just how severe was this crime? Was he convicted of stealing millions of dollars? Not exactly.
Range had defrauded the government out of $2,458 by lying on a food stamp application in 1995. He was sentenced to probation and stripped of his Second Amendment rights unknowingly, according to The Tucson Sentinel. He only found out about the restriction when he decided to purchase a firearm and was rejected.
Range only discovered his inability to purchase a firearm after attempting to do so decades later, prompting what has become a years long back-and-forth across multiple federal courts.
In 2020, Range filed an as-applied challenge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against the U.S. attorney general and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives director. The court dismissed his complaint and Range appealed.
The Third Circuit affirmed the lower court two years later, finding the government had shown that the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation justified barring Range from Second Amendment right entitlements. However, Range successfully petitioned for an en banc rehearing, and in 2023 the circuit reversed the lower court.
Normally, if you are sentenced to prison, you can safely assume that you’ve lost your 2nd Amendment rights. However, Mr. Range wasn’t sentenced to prison. There are any number of crimes where you might be sentenced to probation or community service and you do not lose any of your rights, including your 2nd Amendment rights.
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law violated Range’s Second Amendment rights because there is insufficient historical evidence that such a ban could apply to the plaintiff’s situation.
“Because the Government has not shown that our Republic has a longstanding history and tradition of depriving people like Range of their firearms, § 922(g)(1) cannot constitutionally strip him of his Second Amendment rights,” the ruling read.
In researching this post, I looked up the timeline on when it became illegal for a convicted felon to possess a firearm. If you just went by the section where the Third Circuit said there was historical precedent, you might think this was happening back when the United States was founded or soon after. This is NOT the case.
The stripping of a convicted felon of his or her 2nd Amendment rights was implemented with the 1968 Gun Control Act. Before then, there was nothing that prevented a convicted felon, provided they had fully completed their sentence, from owning a gun. It looks like the lower courts and the original third Circuit court decided to once again play games with the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s rulings.
The Supreme Court’s ruling in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen requires gun laws to be in line with the country’s historical tradition of gun laws. It has been used to strike down several similar unconstitutional restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms.
I am one of those who think that SCOTUS didn’t go far enough. The entire NFA and all follow up laws need to be struck down as unconstitutional.
The court’s majority concluded that the Second Amendment protects all Americans, including felons like Range, because it applies to “the people.” However, it acknowledged that state legislatures can remove these rights from certain groups of people if there is sufficient justification.
Generally, these justifications should be aimed at a very narrow group of criminals. Those who have not yet completed their sentences of course, those who have been convicted of using a weapon in the commission of a crime. (In this I would say displaying it. If someone breaks into a house and isn’t carrying a gun, but has one in their car, they aren’t committing a violent act. Yes, this is semantics)
The state attempted to argue that the law barring Range from owning firearms does have roots in America’s history of gun laws. It argued that “legislatures traditionally used status-based restrictions’ to disarm certain groups of people.”
The court’s response amounted to “Nice try.”
However, the court majority replied by pointing out that “Apart from the fact that those restrictions based on race and religion now would be unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, the Government does not successfully analogize those groups to Range.”
Government attorney Kevin Soter argued that all felonies are “serious crimes” that should allow the government to strip citizens of their Second Amendment rights. Yet, the court challenged him to define the term “credible threat” in Range’s case, which is now required because of the Supreme Court’s ruling in United States v. Rahimi.
“Let’s say that Pennsylvania decided that jaywalking or failing to return library books is a felony,” said Judge Porter, a Donald Trump appointee. “Would those offenders be permanently disarmed under Rahimi?”
Soter replied that such an offender should be disarmed upon conviction and could seek legal mechanisms such as expungement or a pardon to regain their Second Amendment rights.
“That’s a very steep hill to climb,” one judge muttered.
Rahimi was a bad decision by the Supreme Court and has already been abused by state and federal judges. It will need to be revisited down the line. However, there is no indication in the 30 years since Mr. Range completed his sentence that he has broken any other law. The law he did break did not involve violence.
Another problem that Mr. Soter might have inadvertently brought up was the means to restore a felon’s rights. One, as he mentioned, was to seek a pardon. However, that is a very tough thing to get, (Unless you have paid off convinced the right people in the Biden Maladministration), and many states, along with the federal government, make it impossible to get your record expunged. There may be laws on the books that set up a mechanism to do this, but the reality is that there is no actual way to get this done.
Now as to what happens next, I can’t say. Will the state further appeal this to the Supreme Court? They might. If they do and SCOTUS decides to take the case, they could blow yet another hole in the gun controllers boat. We shall see what happens next. In the meantime, congratulations to Mr. Range.
Thatisall
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