SAF Files Amicus Brief in Challenge to Lifetime Gun Ban

When is someone really finished paying their debt to society?

We say they have when they leave prison, but that’s not really true. For one thing, many are on parole, which means they’re still under the authority of the criminal justice system. They might have probation for some other offenses, too.

Yet even without all of that, they don’t have all of their civil liberties back. Eventually, they can vote again, but what about owning guns?

While the Trump Department of Justice is working to rebuild the gun rights restoration process for many convicted felons, not everyone prohibited is a felon. In fact, not everyone who is prohibited committed a crime we typically associate with being a prohibited person, and there is a challenge to this kind of lifetime gun ban, and the Second Amendment Foundation just filed an amicus brief in such a challenge.

From a press release:

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed an amicus brief with the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in a case challenging the federal lifetime ban on firearm possession as applied to an individual with a decades-old misdemeanor DUI conviction.

The case, Williams v. Attorney General of the United States, will be argued before an en banc panel in February. SAF is joined in the amicus filing by the California Rifle & Pistol Association, Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and Second Amendment Law Center.

“The government’s position defies Bruen and Rahimi by seeking to impose a permanent disarmament on a law-abiding citizen based solely on a nonviolent misdemeanor from 20 years ago, with no evidence of ongoing danger,” said SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros. “History shows that Founding-era laws addressed the risks of intoxication and firearms through temporary restrictions on those currently impaired, never by stripping gun rights forever from someone who once drank irresponsibly but has since reformed. We urge the Court to reject this overreach and affirm the district court’s ruling.”

If the Third Circuit rules in favor of Mr. Williams, it could have major implications for many others who are disarmed due to similar convictions.

“This case highlights the unconstitutional overreach of federal disarmament laws that ignore historical limits and present-day realities,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “SAF is committed to defending the rights of individuals like Mr. Williams, and we believe this case warrants the Court’s careful consideration.”

Honestly, while DUI isn’t exactly a good thing, it’s also not remotely on the same level as domestic violence, which is the only misdemeanor charges that make someone prohibited under federal law.

California leveling a lifetime ban on a constitutionally protected right should never have been allowed to fly in the first place. The fact that it did doesn’t surprise me, of course, because of the way courts did their interest balancing act via intermediate scrutiny, which basically let the government do whatever the hell they wanted to trample on gun rights just so long as they said it was in the government’s interests.

But those days are over, following both Bruen and Rahimi.

While I don’t like Rahimi very much, the truth is that it did reaffirm some aspects of Bruen, including the fact that there had to be an analog from the Founding era. As Moros notes above, there were laws about guns and alcohol, but they were temporary in nature. 

It might be one thing to temporarily strip someone of their gun rights following repeated DUI cases, but permanent is going too far. Personally, I think even temporarily suspending their rights is stupid, but that’s just me.

Someone who committed a DUI decades ago should have long paid their debt to society. Keeping them from the totality of their rights for a misdemeanor that is, really, a traffic issue is beyond vile.

Then again, this is California, so…

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