Consider the government’s response to a Supreme Court petition from Melynda Vincent, a Utah social worker who is barred from possessing firearms under Section 922(g)(1) because she was convicted of passing a bad check at a grocery store 17 years ago. Vincent is asking the Court to resolve the circuit split on this issue, arguing that the law is unconstitutional as applied to her because “our historical tradition of firearms regulation does not permit the federal government to permanently disarm someone based solely on the fact of a prior nonviolent criminal conviction.” That is especially true, her lawyers say, when “no evidence suggests that the person poses, or has ever posed, a threat to anyone else.”
In opposition to Vincent’s petition, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that she “cannot prevail on her Second Amendment challenge” because the Justice Department has revived a previously moribund process for restoring the gun rights of people whom the attorney general determines are not “likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.” But that process is entirely discretionary. If disarming someone like Vincent fails the Bruen test, it is no answer to say she can beg for the restoration of constitutional rights she should not have lost to begin with. …
Sauer implausibly argues that all drug users, including occasional cannabis consumers and patients who use marijuana for symptom relief in compliance with state law, pose a danger to public safety that justifies disarming them. And even if there might be “marginal cases” where that is not true, he says, they can be addressed by seeking relief from the attorney general—the same unsatisfactory solution he offers for people with nonviolent criminal records.
The Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) welcomed the Justice Department’s Second Amendment Section as “a major step toward properly recognizing the Second Amendment as protecting a real right that warrants the same institutional protection as all other enumerated rights.” But it also noted that “the DOJ continues—at this moment—to advance harmful and anti-originalist arguments in multiple ongoing cases, including efforts that would narrow or even reverse major Second Amendment victories protecting millions of peaceable Americans.”
In addition to the Justice Department’s defense of Section 922(g)(3), the FPC cited the government’s position in cases involving the ban on guns in post offices and the National Firearms Act’s registration requirements. The organization urged the Trump administration to “immediately halt these contradictory litigation positions and begin supporting—rather than opposing—strong constitutional litigation that advances the very rights this new DOJ section is intended to protect.”
It is encouraging that the Justice Department plans to challenge policies and practices that infringe on the right to arms. But if it were serious about defending the Second Amendment, it would stop defending unjust, historically ungrounded laws that disarm Americans for no good reason.
— Jacob Sullum in The DOJ Says It Will Challenge Unconstitutional Gun Policies. Maybe It Should Stop Defending Them.
Government never give up an real power. Occasionally they may pass us a token crumb or reinterpret something so it doesn’t feel so oppressive but they always make sure to balance that faux liberty with a further restriction somewhere else.
As long as there is government be it a national federal force or a local warlording gang you’ll never really be free. Especially when that government needs to steal/take from you to fund itself.