An additional take on the morning’s mendacity by the 3rd circuit court<\/p>\n
Appeals Court Cites Bigoted Historical Laws to Uphold Ban on Non-Violent Felons Owning Guns<\/a><\/p>\n The federal government can continue to block non-violent felons from possessing firearms.<\/p>\n That\u2019s what a three-judge panel for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday. It found the federal law barring those convicted of non-violent felonies from possessing guns is consistent with the country\u2019s history and tradition of gun regulation. The court specifically relies on historical laws that disarmed disfavored minority groups to reach that conclusion, despite referring to that history as \u201crepugnant\u201d and \u201cunconstitutional.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cThe earliest firearm legislation in colonial America prohibited Native Americans, Black people, and indentured servants from owning firearms,\u201d the court\u2019s per curiam\u00a0opinion reads<\/a>. \u201cLikewise, Catholics in the American colonies (as in Britain) were subject to disarmament without demonstrating a proclivity for violence.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n The ruling is the first from a federal appeals court to deal with the federal prohibition on felons having guns after the Supreme Court created a new standard for reviewing gun cases in\u00a0New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen,\u00a0<\/em>which requires modern gun laws to be substantially similar to those in place near the ratification of the Second Amendment in order to be considered constitutional. An established circuit precedent upholding felon-in-possession crimes, even for non-violent offenders, could prove influential as courts flesh out how the new\u00a0Bruen<\/em>\u00a0standard affects modern gun laws.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Like\u00a0the federal\u00a0district courts that have considered<\/a>\u00a0felony prohibitions post-Bruen<\/em>, the Third Circuit drew heavily from\u00a0Heller<\/em>\u2019s dicta limiting the right to keep and bear arms to \u201claw-abiding, responsible citizens.\u201d The court found that convicted felons could be excluded from \u201cthe people\u201d whose rights the text of the Second Amendment protects.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on history and tradition, we conclude that \u2018the people\u2019 constitutionally entitled to bear arms are the \u2018law-abiding, responsible citizens\u2019 of the polity, a category that properly excludes those who have demonstrated disregard for the rule of law through the commission of felony and felony-equivalent offenses, whether or not those crimes are violent,\u201d the court wrote.<\/p>\n The court said that even though felons do not lose the protections of other amendments contained within the Bill of Rights, it elected to make this distinction specifically for the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n \u201cOur reasoning applies solely to the Second Amendment and does not imply any limitation on the rights of individuals convicted of felony and felony-equivalent offenses under other provisions of the Constitution,\u201d the court wrote.<\/p>\n The case stems from a 1995 misdemeanor conviction of Bryan Range, a Pennsylvania resident who pled guilty to making false statements to obtain food stamp assistance. Though he never served any prison time, Pennsylvania law stipulated that his offense was punishable by up five years in prison.<\/p>\n Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, those convicted of a felony\u2013defined as any crime punishable by more than a year in prison\u2013are permanently prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms.<\/p>\n Due to his conviction, the federal background check system prevented Range from purchasing a hunting rifle. He sued to have the federal ban struck down as applied to him, arguing that the Second Amendment only permits the disarmament of \u201cdangerous persons\u201d rather than non-violent offenders. The Firearms Policy Coalition represented him in the case.<\/p>\n The group did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The Third Circuit ruled that the nation\u2019s history and tradition is replete with examples of state legislatures excluding categories of people from possessing firearms whether or not they were considered violent.<\/p>\n The ruling adds to a growing list of federal court decisions analyzing provisions of the 1968 Gun Control Act under the\u00a0Bruen\u00a0<\/em>test. Since that decision in June, federal courts have struck down the federal gun ban for persons under\u00a0felony indictment<\/a>, the ban on removing a gun\u2019s\u00a0serial number<\/a>, and the gun ban for persons under a\u00a0domestic violence protection order<\/a>. Multiple federal courts have now upheld the ban for convicted felons.<\/p>\n The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An additional take on the morning’s mendacity by the 3rd circuit court Appeals Court Cites Bigoted Historical Laws to Uphold Ban on Non-Violent Felons Owning Guns The federal government can continue to block non-violent felons from possessing firearms. That\u2019s what a three-judge panel for the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Wednesday. It found … 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-87782","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\/87782","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=87782"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87783,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87782\/revisions\/87783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=87782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=87782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=87782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}