{"id":110769,"date":"2025-06-18T11:58:26","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T16:58:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=110769"},"modified":"2025-06-18T11:58:26","modified_gmt":"2025-06-18T16:58:26","slug":"110769","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=110769","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Gun Free School Zones Law<\/a><\/p>\n

The federal government may legally disarm at least some gun owners on or near school property.<\/p>\n

That was the unanimous holding of a three-judge Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Monday. The panel upheld the conviction of a man charged with violating the Federal Gun Free School Zones Act by possessing an AR-15 in a vehicle he was living in 40 feet from a private catholic school. It ruled that the modern buffer zone around schools comported with historical analogues dating back nearly 700 years in England that prohibited possessing firearms in a manner that might \u201cterrify the People.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018why and how\u2019 of 18 U.S.C. \u00a7 922(q)(2)(A), as applied to Allam, are \u2018consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,\u2019\u201d Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote in\u00a0US v. Allam<\/a><\/em>. \u201cPut differently, \u2018taken together,\u2019 the historical analogues offered by the Government \u2018establish that our tradition of firearm regulation supports the application of [\u00a7 922(q)(2)(A)] to [Allam].\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The ruling leaves intact one of the most expansive \u201csensitive places\u201d restrictions for firearm possession in all of federal law. It deals a blow to Second Amendment advocates who have long felt that the law\u2019s 1000-foot buffer zone around school property unduly infringes upon gun-carry rights. At the same time, the panel\u2019s narrow ruling tailored to the specific fact pattern of the case may mitigate the fallout for gun-rights advocates.<\/p>\n

The panel\u2019s decision focused entirely on defendant Ahmed Abdalla Allam\u2019s conduct surrounding his arrest.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

According to the opinion, Allam left his family home in New York in August 2022 to embark on a cross-country road trip in an SUV that also served as his living quarters. He acquired an AR-15 along the way in Pennsylvania before eventually winding up in Beaumont, Texas, in early January 2023. While there, he began parking his car for \u201cextended periods\u201d next to St. Anthony Cathedral Basilica School, a pre-kindergarten through 8th-grade Catholic school. His continued presence near the school drew multiple requests from school officials, parents, and local police officers to move his vehicle over a period of several days.<\/p>\n

During one confrontation by a school parent on a Sunday, Allam reportedly refused to leave because he said he had a \u201cmission\u201d and that \u201cno one would ever see him again after Monday.\u201d The parent, alarmed by the perceived threat and under suspicion that Allam had a gun, called local police to watch Allam\u2019s vehicle.<\/p>\n

When he began to drive away later that day, an officer pulled him over for a traffic violation. He was uncooperative, resulting in his arrest. A search of his vehicle later recovered the AR-15, 150 rounds of ammunition, and a loaded thirty-round magazine. Police also found \u201cchildren\u2019s clothing,\u201d marijuana residue, cocaine, and videos in his phone that showed \u201cdead and dismembered cats,\u201d \u201cAllam gutting cats and pulling out their entrails with his hands,\u201d and Allam \u201clighting [a] cat on fire.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following month, he was indicted for possession of a firearm in a school zone, a charge he contested as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment both facially and as applied to him. The district court rejected his claims, and he was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 60 months in prison. He then appealed the district court\u2019s ruling only as it related to his as-applied challenge.<\/p>\n

Reviewing his appeal, the Fifth Circuit panel first concluded that the plain text of the Second Amendment covered Allam\u2019s conduct.<\/p>\n

\u201cWeighed against the second part of\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u2019s standard, however, Allam\u2019s claim comes up wanting,\u201d Judge Wilson, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote.<\/p>\n

The panel honed in on the federal government\u2019s invocation of the 1328 Statute of Northampton, as well as subsequent versions that became incorporated into American common law, as a suitable analogue to the modern school zone gun ban. These \u201caffray\u201d laws generally prohibited \u201criding or going armed\u201d in public places \u201cto the terror of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThough perhaps not a \u2018dead ringer\u2019 or \u2018historical twin\u2019 of modern \u2018buffer zone\u2019 restrictions on firearm possession, the Statute of Northampton is nonetheless of a type of historical location-based regulation relevantly similar to \u00a7 922(q)(2)(A)\u2019s application to Allam,\u201d Wilson wrote.<\/p>\n

He said the \u201cwhy\u201d behind the enactment of the Gun Free School Zones Act\u2014general concern about crime and gun violence at schools and parents being afraid to send their kids to school for that reason\u2014matches the rationale of restricting those who carry firearms \u201cto the terror of people.\u201d He said \u201chow\u201d the laws limit the presence of firearms was also relevantly similar.<\/p>\n

\u201cSection 922(q)(2)(A) delimits schools and buffer zones around them as areas in which firearms may not be carried, subject to significant enumerated exceptions that materially ameliorate the restriction of the right,\u201d Wilson said. \u201cThis roughly maps with how the Statute of Northampton\u2019s various location-based restrictions generally operated in practice, as well as the behavior the going-armed laws proscribed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Finally, the panel emphasized that its opinion was to be construed only as upholding the federal ban based on Allam\u2019s behavior and not necessarily in other applications.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need not\u2014and do not\u2014fix how far a buffer zone may stretch before it runs afoul of the Second Amendment to decide Allam\u2019s as-applied claim,\u201d Wilson wrote. \u201cWe offer no opinion regarding the constitutionality of \u00a7 922(q)(2)(A) in any other context.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal Appeals Court Upholds Gun Free School Zones Law The federal government may legally disarm at least some gun owners on or near school property. That was the unanimous holding of a three-judge Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Monday. The panel upheld the conviction of a man charged with violating the Federal Gun … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23,11,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-crap-for-brains","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110769"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110770,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110769\/revisions\/110770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}