If someone is still dangerous and can’t be trusted around law-abiding Americans, they should remain in prison. That’s my very simple take, and while I know that’s not going to happen, I still say they should get their rights back when they complete their sentences. I’m not thrilled with the idea of violent felons getting gun rights, but that’s my hang-up. That’s not a reason to keep prohibiting them.
Still, violent felons are a bridge too far for many. Non-violent felons, on the other hand? Well, if they’re not violent, why are they prohibited from having guns?
And one felon is engaged in a battle to change all of that.
Federal laws governing the possession of firearms could be drastically pared back or wiped out depending on how an entire federal appeals court rules on a case.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request on July 20 to hear an appeal of a panel’s ruling that upheld the conviction of Curtis Squires, who had been charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm. A ruling favoring Squires, whose attorneys raised arguments over the Commerce Clause, could drastically pare back the reach of federal gun laws involving possession of firearms.
The decision to take the case “en banc” came a month after Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas authored a concurring opinion in Hemani v. United States raising the possibility that federal firearms possession laws were unconstitutional on the grounds that they exceeded the authority granted to Congress via the Commerce Clause. The three-judge panel’s opinion upholding the sentence was released on June 2, over two weeks prior to the Supreme Court issuing the Hemani decision.
And let’s also think about the historical precedents that will likely be used. It wasn’t uncommon to take action against people who are likely to be violent. This was the crux of the issue in Rahimi, after all, and the restraining order against him.
While I disagree with Rahimi, it’s still judicial precedent, and it upheld the Bruen standard of history, text, and tradition.
The problem for the government’s attorneys, at least as I see it, is that a non-violent felon isn’t someone you can just easily assume is a violent person. It’s one thing for a drunk to be prohibited from carrying guns because he’s dangerous in that moment, but just as you can’t assume that an occasional marijuana user is violent simply because some drug users are also violent, you can’t just assume that a non-violent felon is violent simply because violent felons are violent.
It seems to me that the analogy here between Hemani and Squires’s case is pretty damn strong.
And Hemani isn’t the only thing to consider.
One Second Amendment scholar hinted that a three-decade-old Supreme Court ruling could come into play.
“Being a felon in possession of a firearm is a purely state matter involving local crime, over which the federal government was never intended to meddle,” attorney Stephen Halbrook told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There’s nothing commercial about it, as the Supreme Court recognized in Lopez.”
In 1995, the Supreme Court struck down the 1990 Gun-Free Schools Zones Act, which made it a federal crime to have a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school, finding in United States v. Lopez that mere possession of a firearm did not affect interstate commerce.
The truth is that the Interstate Commerce Clause is one of the more abused portions of the Constitution. It’s been twisted to provide the feds with authority in a pile of things it has no business butting into.
But U.S. v. Lopez does play a factor here, because, as Halbrook notes, the feds aren’t supposed to be butting in here.
Yes, there are a lot of “buts” there, but considering how many buttheads make these laws, I’m fine with it.
Honestly, while the Fifth Circuit is usually a strongly pro-gun court, I doubt the en banc panel is going to rule correctly here, thus setting things up for a potential fight before the Supreme Court to answer the question once and for all.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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