The apparent stupidity of the legal minds in the United States astounds me. On one hand a federal judge who's job it is to meet out justice that fits the crime asks, "how courts could draw a line between what crimes indicate a threat of violence and which do not." Isn't that exactly what the Courts and Law do when they label crimes felonies or misdemeanors?
Then the attorney for the Government states, with a straight face and believing his own words, "disrespect for rule of law" shown by a criminal conviction was enough to allow Congress to forbid someone from buying guns. He said asking courts to decide defendants' threat of violence was "totally unworkable."
Well Mr. Kevin Soter of the U.S. Department of Justice I can say with absolute assurance that you have run a Stop Sign in your life and "disrespected the rule of Law" yet you remain free to exercise your rights. Is the "totally unworkable" part your inability to read the code of law and sort out violent from non-violent.
IMHO it is the community of legal minds that are working 'for profit' are eschewing a doctrine of "Violence is in the eye of the beholder." At the cost of the lives of our Children, our minority brothers and sisters, and our political/social/moral leaders.
In short IMHO professional legal counsels today are bought and paid and solely concerned with their visage in their mirrors and their pocketbooks.
And yes, I know this is a case to give gun rights to a convict, of a misdemeanor. My point is the legal community argues this and lets murders, wife beaters, child molesters, and convicted felons keep guns. Saying, "how can We tell the difference?" "Everyone Must have guns because the 2nd Amendment says so." BS
(Reuters) - A federal appeals court on Wednesday grappled with whether the federal government can ban people convicted of non-violent crimes from possessing guns in the wake of last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling expanding gun rights.
All of the judges of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, reheard the case Wednesday pressing attorneys for the government and for the man challenging the ban, Bryan Range, to provide examples from U.S. history to support their positions. A three-judge panel had upheld the ban last November.
The Supreme Court in June held in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that to be permissible under the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution any restrictions on gun ownership had be consistent with the nation's historical tradition of gun regulation.
Range pleaded guilty in 1995 to committing welfare fraud in Pennsylvania in order to obtain $2,458 of food stamps a misdemeanor punishable by up to five years' imprisonment. The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 bans people convicted of crimes punishable by more than a year and a day in prison — which are usually felonies — from buying guns. Range sued the federal government in 2020 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, federal court, saying the ban violated his 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
A federal judge ruled in favor of the government in 2021, and a three-judge 3rd Circuit panel upheld that ruling, finding that even after Bruen the law could stand because there was "a longstanding tradition of disarming citizens who are not law-abiding."
But Peter Patterson, Range's lawyer, told the full 3rd Circuit that historical restrictions on gun ownership had focused on people who posed a danger of violence.
"Under Bruen, Bryan Range's non-dangerous misdemeanor offense cannot disqualify him from exercising his 2nd Amendment rights," Patterson said.
Circuit Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, one of the judges who had ruled against Range on the three-judge panel, pressed Patterson to explain how courts could draw a line between what crimes indicate a threat of violence and which do not.
Patterson said it could vary depending on the case, but that "the burden is always on the government" to show dangerousness.
Kevin Soter of the U.S. Department of Justice said "disrespect for rule of law" shown by a criminal conviction was enough to allow Congress to forbid someone from buying guns. He said asking courts to decide defendants' threat of violence was "totally unworkable."
However, he acknowledged that there were no laws forbidding convicted criminals from buying guns before 1938, when it was first banned for a limited number of violent crimes. Asked by Circuit Judge David Porter whether Congress could have passed a law disarming criminals earlier, Soter said he was not sure.
"Of course society was very different back then," he said.
The case is Range v. Attorney General of the United States, 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 21-2835.
For Range: David Thompson of Cooper & Kirk
For the United States: Kevin Soter of the U.S. Department of Justice
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