How Fifth Circuit Decision Sets Stage for SCOTUS Ruling on Gun Rights for Non-Violent Felons

I understand why some people don’t want gun rights for felons. The popular image of a felon is someone who was arrested for armed robbery, murder, or something equally violent. Still others figure that many felons are guilty of far more than they were convicted of, so you’re just covering your bases by treating them all the same.

But the issue is that our system isn’t meant to work like that. Yeah, a lot of non-violent felons may well have been violent as hell without being caught, but others weren’t, and we don’t have a system intended to punish people for crimes they weren’t convicted of. We assume people are innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.

Yet the ban on gun rights for non-violent felons is still in place.

Last month, the Fifth Circuit ruled that lifetime gun bans for non-violent felons were unconstitutional.

As Mark Chesnut notes at The Truth About Guns, this is a departure from what other circuit courts have ruled.

A federal appeals court has struck down the law banning a nonviolent felon from ever owning firearms again.

On January 27, a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals, in the case U.S. v. Hembree, found the law unconstitutional as applied to defendant Charles Hembree.

…

The ruling flies directly in the face of contrary rulings in other circuits, further defining a circuit split on the matter. That’s another good reason for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case on the issue in the coming years.

And the truth is that this is much of what the Supreme Court looks for in a case. They seem more willing to take a case where the circuit courts disagree, as it makes it clear there’s some need for clarification of previous precedents. 

With this ruling, the chances of the Supreme Court taking up the issue become far more realistic.

Granted, I don’t know if that’ll be a good thing or not. 

After all, this is the same Court that issued the ruling in Rahimi that said people under restraining orders could be lawfully disarmed despite having not been convicted of anything. Yes, these were domestic violence restraining orders, but it does hint that some of the justices view certain people as being unworthy of their gun rights, even if there’s no definitive proof they are.

With convicted felons, even non-violent ones, the Court might decide to uphold the lifetime ban, or they might decide that a lack of violent felonies means they shouldn’t be banned for life.

I don’t actually know, and that bothers me.

If they take up the case, we’ll have a better read on what they’re thinking when the questions start being asked, but until then, we don’t know. Hopefully, though, the Court will set this to right, because gun rights are human rights, and while it’s one thing to punish criminals, it’s another to keep punishing them for the rest of their lives, especially when they’ve never hurt anyone.

Personally, I think if even the violent felons are that much of a danger, why are they on the streets at all?

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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