Let’s Be Real, There’s No Reason for Trump to be Disarmed for Life

Of all the people who have been disarmed because of criminal convictions, the one who has to worry the least is probably President-elect Donald Trump. After all, he’s got a Secret Service detail that, while maybe not that great it preventing assassination attempts, does at least mean he’s unlikely to be held up on a street corner or have to deal with a home invasion.

But the truth is that Trump shouldn’t be disarmed. The crime he was convicted off, problematic as the allegations themselves were, didn’t come close to being a violent crime or any kind of crime that means Trump is a threat to public safety.

I’ve made this point before.

I’m also not the only one saying it. Jacob Sullum at Reason has a similar take.

Because Trump’s convictions involved crimes that were notionally punishable by more than a year of incarceration, they made him subject to a federal law that bars him from possessing firearms. That law is unfair, illogical, and constitutionally dubious because it deprives Americans of their Second Amendment rights even when they have no history of violence.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against Trump was based on a vague, convoluted, and highly questionable legal theory aimed at punishing conduct that was not inherently criminal: trying to conceal his 2016 nondisclosure agreement with porn star Stormy Daniels. But even if you think the prosecution was justified, the allegations underlying it provide no reason to believe Trump is prone to gun violence.

The same could be said of many other state and federal crimes that nevertheless trigger the loss of the constitutional right to armed self-defense, such as mail fraud, securities fraud, theft of fishing gear, driving under the influence, perjury, embezzlement, obstruction of justice, nonviolent drug offenses, and gun possession by cannabis consumers. As UCLA law professor Adam Winkler observes, this category of “prohibited persons” is “wildly overinclusive,” encompassing a long list of crimes that are “not violent in the least.”

Let’s also note that Winkler, who Sullum cites here, isn’t exactly pro-gun.

In fact, he’s one of the media’s favorite academics to reach out to when they need someone to lend academic authority to gun control. For him to note that these laws are “wildly overinclusive” is suggestive of just how much of an overreach they really are.

It’s one thing to disarm violent felons for life. They’ve shown a propensity for violence already, and while I’m not completely on board with it–my take is that if they’re so dangerous, why wasn’t their sentence longer–I can at least understand it and it’s not a hill I’m ready to die on.

But Trump, for all his sins both real and imagined, has no violent crime convictions.

What he does have now is a prohibition on gun ownership while also having nuclear launch codes and the United States Marine Corps on speed dial. I find that discrepancy downright hilarious.

He can’t have guns because he was a naughty boy, but he can direct the entire United States Armed Forces to use their guns, and that doesn’t get into federal law enforcement and all of their firearms, either.