
On Dec. 23, the full Third Circuit, in Philadelphia, ruled that Rahimi did not change the court’s conclusion that Bryan Range, who was convicted of food stamp fraud nearly 30 years ago, could not be permanently disarmed under the law.
“The government has not shown that our Republic has a longstanding history and tradition of depriving people like Range of their firearms,” Judge Thomas M. Hardiman wrote for the majority, meaning that the law “cannot constitutionally strip him of his Second Amendment rights.”
Five days earlier, a unanimous three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., came to a different conclusion. “The historical record contains ample support for the categorical disarmament of people ‘who have demonstrated disrespect for legal norms of society,’” Judge Toby J. Heytens wrote for the panel. He cited a decision in August from a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, which reached the same conclusion.
When the full Eighth Circuit declined to rehear the case in November, Judge David R. Stras dissented.
“I have no special affection for felons, either,” he wrote, “but the Second Amendment does not care. It says what it says, and so do the Supreme Court decisions interpreting it.”
It was a grave legal error, he added, to assume that “a group numbering in the tens of millions and ranging from murderers to ketchup-bottle tamperers” could all be barred from owning guns.
On Friday, the justices are scheduled to consider the case of Andre Dubois at their private conference. He was convicted under the felon-in-possession provision and urged the court to hear his case to address what he said was a “state of disarray” in the lower courts.
“Someone who attempted to evade their taxes 20 years ago and has not committed a crime since should retain their Second Amendment rights,” Mr. Dubois’s brief said. “Someone who committed felony shoplifting at 18 and is now a 40-year old mother who has never been in trouble since should retain their Second Amendment rights.”
The government urged the justices to send the case back to the lower courts for reconsideration in light of Rahimi. Mr. Dubois called such review “an exercise in futility, as the government is well aware.”
“Post-Rahimi, the split among the circuits has only hardened,” he added. “Judges within circuits vehemently disagree.”
He urged the justices to grant review “to resolve the split and restore national harmony.”
— Adam Liptak in Courts in ‘State of Disarray’ on Law Disarming Felons
It’s way past time for SCOTUS to settle a lot of constitutional questions, but they’re in no hurry to get it done.
Commit a felony, of any severity, and you are encumbered with a life-long sentence. Any judge who believes the Constitution provides justification for such harshness, is putting prejudice above the law.
97 days.
I agree that it’s time to settle the issue once and for all. I suspect that having a pro-2A NYC concealed carry permit-owning gun owner president, who also just so happens to be a convicted felon, might just backfire on the gun grabbers. Dumbass BS judge just so desperately wanted to hang the title of “convicted felon” on Trump, and in the end he got what he wanted, but I also think he may have won a tiny skirmish just to be obliterated in the full scale legal hellscape he “presided over”. I would not want to be on the bad side of a pissed-off billionaire, especially one who just so happens to also be the President of the US in 8 days. The gun grabbers should be praying that the SCOTUS overturns the nonviolent felon prohibition in the hopes that that will defuse the Trump Bomb they just set off.
Because of his conviction he lost his 2A rights.