{"id":92259,"date":"2023-04-28T00:03:49","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T05:03:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=92259"},"modified":"2023-04-27T21:12:44","modified_gmt":"2023-04-28T02:12:44","slug":"92259","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=92259","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal Judge Rules Felons Aren\u2019t Protected by Second Amendment<\/a><\/p>\n

Convicted felons do not have gun rights, according to a new federal ruling.<\/p>\n

Judge Holly A. Brady, who President Donald Trump appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in 2019, denied a request last week to have a felon\u2019s gun possession charge tossed on constitutional grounds. She found the Second Amendment does not protect Detric L. Cummings\u2019, a convicted felon, ability to own a firearm. She further ruled that barring felons from owning guns is consistent with historical gun restrictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe long list of colonial laws excluding felons from possessing firearms either shows that he is excluded from the protections of the Second Amendment or that \u00a7 922(g)(1) is consistent with the Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation,\u201d Judge Brady\u00a0wrote in\u00a0United States v. Cummings<\/em><\/a>. \u201cEither is enough to defeat Defendant\u2019s motion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ruling is another example of how little success convicted felons have had in asserting protections under the Second Amendment, even in the wake of last year\u2019s landmark\u00a0New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen<\/em>. Despite the doubt cast on many modern gun restrictions by\u00a0Bruen\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0new standard for deciding gun cases, felons have had little success convincing courts that the Second Amendment forstalls prohibitions on their ability to own guns. In fact, Pepperdine University Professor Jake Charles recently\u00a0released a report<\/a>\u00a0that found there hasn\u2019t been a single successful Second Amendment claim brought against the federal law barring possession of firearms by convicted felons.<\/p>\n

The recent setbacks come despite a handful of rulings and prominent dissents that questioned the federal lifetime prohibition on at least some, namely non-violent, felons owning guns. Justice Amy Coney Barrett\u00a0dissented<\/a>\u00a0in favor of restoring the gun rights of a non-violent felon in 2019\u2019s\u00a0Kanter v. Barr<\/em>. A similar case brought by a Pennsylvania man barred from owning guns over a welfare fraud conviction, Range v. Garland, recently lost before a panel of the 3rd Circuit but is currently\u00a0awaiting a decision from the full court<\/a>\u00a0after oral arguments were held in February 2023.<\/p>\n

United States v. Cummings<\/em>\u00a0does not deal with the question of non-violent felon gun rights, though. Cummings was arrested by Fort Wayne, Indiana police last summer for selling methamphetamine, fentanyl, and a revolver to an informant,\u00a0according to WANE<\/a>. The 40-year-old was convicted of shooting a woman over an unpaid debt in 2005. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison before being released in 2020.<\/p>\n

Judge Brady was indignant at his attempt to have the gun possession charges tossed, arguing his plea flies in the face of \u201ca virtual mountain of case law.\u201d She said, \u201cninety-plus defendants that have hoed the same row in the past\u201d and been denied. She dismissed his legal argument as little more than \u201cacademic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDefendant has chosen the first step as the hill he will die on, arguing that he is one of \u2018the people\u2019 whose right to bear arms is protected by the Second Amendment, regardless of his extensive criminal history,\u201d Judge Brady wrote. \u201cAnd, to be sure, there is a healthy debate in the case law about who \u2018the people\u2019 are. But that debate is interesting only if you view the law as a zesty academic affair rather than a way to run an ordered society.\u201d<\/p>\n

She argued that, even if Cummings is part of \u201cthe people\u201d mentioned in the Second Amendment, historical tradition would allow the government to restrict his access to guns. She briefly pointed to colonial bans on carrying firearms in a way that terrifies people and an 1866 South Carolina ban on \u201cdisorderly\u201d people bearing arms. And she cited the Supreme Court\u2019s notice in 2008\u2019s Heller that its ruling did not cast doubt on felon gun bans.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, in her two-page opinion, Judge Brady found the debate is settled and unworthy of a lengthy discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo spend judicial resources agonizing over which the Court should hang its hat on is little more than spilled ink,\u201d she wrote. \u201cMore than ninety judicial opinions bear this out.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal Judge Rules Felons Aren\u2019t Protected by Second Amendment Convicted felons do not have gun rights, according to a new federal ruling. Judge Holly A. Brady, who President Donald Trump appointed to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in 2019, denied a request last week to have a felon\u2019s 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":[23,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-rkba"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92259","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=92259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92260,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92259\/revisions\/92260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}