Will Courts Pin Back the Ears Of Anti-Gun Legislators?

Jacob Sullum has a piece out today at Townhall.com entitled The 3rd Circuit Considers Whether Nonviolent Crimes Justify The Loss Of Second Amendment Rights. The plaintiff in the case is Randy Range who pleaded guilty of fraudulently obtaining $2,458 in food stamps by misrepresenting his income. He was given a sentence of 3 years probation, fined $100, and paid $288 in court costs.

Obviously, Randy Range is not your violent criminal type. He made a mistake, and paid the price. What has bothered me all along is how an anti-gun government can create prohibited persons by simply creating felonies. All they have to do seemingly is make the penalty for every crime one year or more in prison. They don't have to impose that penalty, just that it is on the books.

In any case, Range attempted to buy a hunting rifle and was turned down. Thinking this was a mistake, he asked his wife to buy it for him. He did not realize that his conviction for a relatively minor nonviolent crime meant he had given up his Second Amendment rights.  I am sure that such was never explained to him either by the court or by his, no doubt, court appointed lawyer.  

Range's initial confusion about his status is not surprising, since the rule he inadvertently violated does not make much sense. Although it is ostensibly aimed at protecting public safety, it does not require any evidence of violent tendencies. In a Nov. 16 decision that was vacated last week, a 3rd Circuit panel said that policy nevertheless is "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation" -- the constitutional test that the Supreme Court says gun laws must pass. Surveying the history of status-based gun prohibitions from 17th-century England through ratification of the Second Amendment, the panel perceived a pattern of disarming people "who did not respect the law," whether or not they posed a violent threat.

A brief that the Firearms Policy Coalition submitted on Range's behalf reaches a strikingly different conclusion. "Historically, firearm prohibitions applied to dangerous persons," the brief says. "There is no tradition in American history of banning peaceable citizens from owning firearms."

That take jibes with a 2019 dissent that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. "Legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns," she said. "But that power extends only to people who are (SET ITAL) dangerous.(END ITAL) "

Hopefully, the courts will pin back the ears of these anti-gun legislators, who are entirely too numerous.