I’m not going to sit here and tell you that driving while under the influence of anything is a good idea. Anyone with a functional brain knows that it’s not. DUI can not just lead to your own death, but also the death of others. The hell of it is, drunks are often the only survivors of DUI crashes, which is some kind of perverse irony that I wish wasn’t a thing.
Those guilty of DUI can face all kinds of penalties, ranging from fines all the way up to jail time, and they typically deserve it all.
The Supreme Court in Washington state, however, figures that’s not nearly enough. They absolutely should also lose their gun rights on the second offense.
The Washington State Supreme Court has ruled that individuals convicted of two driving under the influence offenses within seven years will be stripped of their Second Amendment rights, which the dissenting opinion blasted as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution.
In a split 5-4 decision filed Thursday in Geoffrey G. McLellan and Jackson W. Holloway v. Nicholas W. Brown, the court reversed a lower court ruling and held that the Washington Legislature acted within its constitutional authority by categorically disarming repeat drunk drivers in the interest of public safety.
Under Thursday’s ruling, Washingtonians convicted of a second DUI or related crime within seven years cannot own or possess a firearm under a 2023 state statute.
Firearm rights can only be restored after a petition is filed following five consecutive years of “law-abiding behavior in the community.”
Respondents Geoffrey McLellan and Jackson Holloway challenged the law after their applications for concealed carry permits were denied following multiple DUI convictions.
They argued that a blanket, categorical ban on their fundamental right to self-defense, absent any history of weapon misuse or physical violence, violated the Second Amendment.
Now, I understand the argument that two DUI arrests with seven years show some poor decision-making, and I won’t argue it. It most certainly does. The problem, though, isn’t that some people can feel mostly fine while blowing .08 on a breathalyzer–which seems to be true–but that if they honestly thought this was so big a problem that it warrants taking someone’s gun rights away, they’d make it a felony.
No one did.
The truth is that I agree with the defendants here that a categorical ban on their gun rights is completely unwarranted under the circumstances.
This is an offense that is so heinous that it comes with 30 days in jail, two years of a suspended license, but five years of not being able to own a gun. That’s right, the person convicted of being irresponsible enough to drive while intoxicated can be back to driving in just two years, but their gun rights won’t be returned to them for at least five years, and the petitioning process is going to be a lot harder than going to the DMV to get your license back.
And the state supreme court says, “Hey, that makes perfect sense. Totally constitutional.”
Even if you accepted that taking away someone’s guns for a second DUI conviction–a misdemeanor–shouldn’t the suspended license be for longer than their gun rights, especially when they’re gun rights, but driving is a privilege?
This is absolutely insane.
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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