{"id":92679,"date":"2023-05-11T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=92679"},"modified":"2023-05-11T08:00:31","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T13:00:31","slug":"92679","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=92679","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Federal judge upholds constitutionality of law against possessing guns without serial numbers<\/a>
\nJudge William Mart\u00ednez agreed that guns lacking serial numbers are not ‘typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes’<\/p>\n

Although a major U.S. Supreme Court decision last year made it easier to strike down gun safety regulations as unconstitutional, a federal judge agreed on Monday that a law banning the possession of guns that lack serial numbers does not run afoul of the Second Amendment.<\/p>\n

Within months of his indictment for possessing a firearm\u00a0with an “obliterated” serial number<\/a>\u00a0in Denver, Jonathan Avila moved for dismissal of the criminal charge, arguing the law violated his constitutional right to bear arms.<\/p>\n

But in a May 8 order,<\/a>\u00a0U.S. District Court Senior Judge William J.\u00a0Mart\u00ednez disagreed, noting the Supreme Court has interpreted the Second Amendment as protecting the right to own weapons for the lawful purpose of self-defense.<\/p>\n

“Reason and the experience of law enforcement counsel is that obliterating a firearm\u2019s serial number serves another purpose: making the identity of a person who possesses a particular firearm more difficult to determine,” Mart\u00ednez wrote. “This feature makes firearms with obliterated serial numbers useful for criminal activity.”<\/p>\n

Consequently, he determined guns lacking serial numbers are not within the Second Amendment’s protection.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez is one of many federal judges who have had to grapple with the fallout from the\u00a0Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in\u00a0New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen<\/em><\/a>. The court’s conservative majority voided New York’s licensing regime for the public carry of weapons, but also laid down a new legal framework for analyzing the constitutionality of gun regulations broadly.<\/p>\n

The government, when defending the constitutionality of a firearm law, “must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation\u2019s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” wrote Justice Clarence Thomas for the majority.<\/p>\n

He added that if a law addresses a “general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century,” the lack of a regulation from the 1700s comparable to a modern restriction is “relevant evidence” that current policies are unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In addition to\u00a0ongoing challenges against Colorado’s state regulations<\/a>\u00a0on guns, U.S. District Court Judges Regina M. Rodriguez and Charlotte N. Sweeney\u00a0separately rejected challenges last year<\/a>\u00a0to the federal prohibition on felons owning weapons.<\/p>\n

“It is undisputed that jurisdictions throughout history have had the ability to regulate the possession of a weapon,”\u00a0Sweeney wrote\u00a0in November.<\/a><\/p>\n

Avila filed his motion to dismiss the weapons charge one month after a federal judge in West Virginia determined the prohibition on possessing a gun with an obliterated serial number was unconstitutional.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

U.S. District Court Judge Joseph R. Goodwin deemed the law a “blatant prohibition on possession,” and reiterated the\u00a0Bruen\u00a0<\/em>decision barred him from considering the government’s interest in controlling firearms. Without analyzing the Second Amendment’s protection of self-defense, he followed the Supreme Court’s directive to look at the history of regulating guns without serial numbers\u00a0\u2014 and found it to be nonexistent.<\/p>\n

“While firearms then were not the same as firearms today, there certainly were gun crimes that might have been more easily investigated if firearms had to be identifiable by a serial number or other mark,”\u00a0Goodwin wrote in October.<\/a>\u00a0“The Government has presented no evidence, and the court is not aware of any, that any such requirement existed in 1791.”<\/p>\n

Even though other federal judges reached the opposite conclusion, Avila seized on Goodwin’s analysis.<\/p>\n

“The Second Amendment draws no distinction between arms with serial numbers and arms without them,” wrote defense attorney Rebecca Briggs. “An individual\u2019s possession of a firearm is being criminalized.”<\/p>\n

The government countered that the Supreme Court has acknowledged the Second Amendment protects the right to possess arms “in case of confrontation,” and there was a history of prohibiting “dangerous and unusual weapons.” Colonial laws\u00a0even required gun owners to register<\/a>\u00a0with militia officers.<\/p>\n

“Here, the defendant does not explain how prohibiting the possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number unconstitutionally inhibits his ability to possess a weapon in case of confrontation,” wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney\u00a0Laura Cramer-Babycz.<\/p>\n

Mart\u00ednez sided with the government, finding guns with obliterated serial numbers are not guns “typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” He also believed they fit within the Supreme Court’s label of “dangerous and unusual,” and, therefore, do not have Second Amendment protection.<\/p>\n

Because Avila’s alleged crime did not implicate his constitutional rights,\u00a0Mart\u00ednez did not address the historical tradition of regulating guns that lack serial numbers.<\/p>\n

Avila also stands accused of three counts of distributing fentanyl and cocaine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Federal judge upholds constitutionality of law against possessing guns without serial numbers Judge William Mart\u00ednez agreed that guns lacking serial numbers are not ‘typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes’ Although a major U.S. Supreme Court decision last year made it easier to strike down gun safety regulations as unconstitutional, a federal judge agreed … 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":[23,48,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courts","category-crime","category-gun-schtuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92679","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=92679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92680,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92679\/revisions\/92680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}