“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
The right of the people to keep and bear arms. Seems pretty straightforward, doesn’t it? The people. Not some of the people, but the people, implying all of them.
However, there are a number of Americans walking around right now who, despite having been trouble-free for years, are forbidden from owning a firearm for self-defense. They didn’t lose those rights without due process, admittedly, but was a lifetime ban on these people, once convicted of a felony but now peaceable citizens, warranted?
I don’t think so, and I’m not alone.
From a press release from the Firearms Policy Coalition:
Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it joined the National Rifle Association and Second Amendment Foundation in filing an important brief with the United States Supreme Court in Johnson v. United States, urging the Court to hear a challenge to the federal government’s permanent disarmament of people convicted of nonviolent crimes.
Joseph Johnson’s sole predicate conviction is a 2015 state marijuana-cultivation offense. He has never been convicted of a violent offense, but federal law permanently prohibits him from possessing firearms or ammunition. The Tenth Circuit rejected his Second Amendment challenge because its precedent categorically bars as-applied challenges to the federal felon-in-possession law, even when the underlying offense was nonviolent.
“The government does not get to turn a decade-old marijuana conviction into a lifetime ban on exercising a constitutionally protected right. We have been fighting this immoral disarmament scheme for years—in our research, scholarship, and cases across the country. FPC and our Grassroots Army will continue to Fight Forward until we end this unconstitutional and immoral lifetime gun ban,” said FPC President Brandon Combs.
The amicus brief argues that American history supports disarming people who were considered dangerous—not permanently stripping peaceable people of their rights merely because they committed a nonviolent felony. It explains that historically, nonviolent offenders retained the right to keep and bear arms and, in some circumstances, were even legally required to possess arms through militia laws.
The brief also rejects the view that Heller’s description of felon-disarmament laws as “presumptively lawful” makes them immune from constitutional challenge. FPC and its fellow amici argue that Bruen requires the government to justify firearm restrictions through the Nation’s historical tradition, and that there is no such tradition supporting the permanent disarmament of peaceable people.
FPC has long urged the Supreme Court to recognize that the historical justification for firearm prohibitions was the disarmament of dangerous people—not peaceable people convicted of nonviolent offenses—through original research, scholarship, and litigation, including cases like Folajtar v. Attorney General, Holloway v. Garland, and Range v. Garland. FPC scholarship has also helped develop the historical record showing that America’s tradition is one of disarming dangerous persons, not permanently disarming peaceable Americans.
“Heller’s ‘presumptively lawful’ line was never a blank check for a lifetime ban on every peaceable American with a felony on his record,” said Second Amendment Foundation Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros in a separate statement. “Historically, we disarmed dangerous people. We did not strip the Second Amendment right from those who broke the law without violence and then went back to living as ordinary, peaceable citizens. A permanent ban with no path to restoration is simply not how our tradition worked.”
While there’s now something of a path, that path is tenuous. Right now, it works, but the next anti-gun president will undoubtedly close it, which isn’t how it’s supposed to work. The idea that people should be punished for a lifetime isn’t absurd. We execute people in most states, at least when we can do so successfully — looking at you, Tennessee — so a life in prison is tame by comparison.
But Mr. Johnson didn’t get life in prison. He broke a law 11 years ago, one that’s fast becoming obsolete today. Still, he paid his debt to society and would like to exercise his Second Amendment rights.
It’s one thing to say they lose it for a decade, then get it back if they start walking the straight and narrow. It’s one thing to say that if they keep their nose clean, they can apply to get their rights restored and that process will remain open and must be funded by Congress. It’s quite another to go, “Nope. You’re screwed. Sorry you made a mistake when you were 18 and will now pay for it the rest of your life, but…wait, we’re not sorry. Screw you!”
I stand with these three organizations in calling for the Supreme Court to step up and make this right.
Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.
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