Third Circuit upholds felon gun ban but judges clash over its limits

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, upheld the felon-in-possession conviction of a Pennsylvania man with a 2002 carjacking case in his past, but the splintered opinion leaves plenty of room for future Second Amendment challenges to the federal felon gun ban.

Snapshot

The case, U.S. v. Bost, centered on whether Section 922(g)(1) could constitutionally be applied to a man convicted of terroristic threats and criminal conspiracy tied to a carjacking, who was later caught with a stolen .38 caliber pistol. The majority ruled the ban valid as applied to him because his record showed a risk of physical violence, but several judges wrote separately to dispute the reasoning, according to bearingarms.com.

Key points

• The core holding: the majority said historical justification for disarmament rests on preventing physical violence, not merely punishing any past crime, and found his record met that bar.
• Split concurrences: Judges Patty Schwartz, Cheryl Ann Krause, and L. Felipe Restrepo agreed with the outcome but argued the statute should apply to all felons, not just violent ones.
• Objections to the historical analogues: Judge Tamika R. Montgomery-Reeves criticized reliance on what she called discriminatory historical laws as justification.
• Dissent on principle: Judges Peter J. Phipps and Emil J. Bove argued there is no historical tradition of disarming felons once their sentences are served.
• Rights restoration left unresolved: the court noted the DOJ's planned restoration process isn't operational yet and rejected the idea that defendants must seek it before raising constitutional defenses.

Quick take

This is another data point in the ongoing circuit-court disagreement over 922(g)(1), with the Seventh Circuit treating the ban as nearly unchallengeable while the Third Circuit keeps carving out case-by-case exceptions. Cam Edwards of Bearing Arms suggests the Supreme Court may eventually have to settle the conflict, whether through Bost or another case working through the pipeline.

Read the full story: bearingarms.com