A rare Second Amendment exemption from federal ban on felons possessing guns

[usmarine0352_2005]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...n-from-federal-ban-on-felons-possessing-guns/

A rare Second Amendment exemption from federal ban on felons possessing guns

By Eugene Volokh September 27 at 7:53 PM

The question, then, is whether this “presumpti[on]” of validity can ever be rebutted — for instance, if a person’s felony conviction is many decades in the past, is for a not very serious felony, or both. Some federal courts have stated that the answer would be “yes” under the right circumstances. United States v. Moore, 666 F.3d 313, 320 (4th Cir. 2012); United States v. Barton, 633 F.3d 168, 174 (3d Cir. 2011); United States v. Williams, 616 F.3d 685, 693 (7th Cir. 2010); United States v. Duckett, 406 Fed. Appx. 185, 187 (9th Cir. 2010) (Ikuta, J., concurring); United States v. McCane, 573 F.3d 1037, 1049-50 (10th Cir. 2009) (Tymkovich, J., concurring). Some North Carolina state court decisions have actually set aside particular claimants’ state-law gun disabilities, under the North Carolina Constitution’s right to bear arms provision. Britt v. State, 681 S.E.2d 320 (N.C. 2009) (holding that a nonviolent felon whose crime was long in the past regained his state constitutional right to keep and bear arms); Baysden v. State, 718 S.E.2d 699 (N.C. Ct. App. 2011) (same). But Thursday’s Binderup v. Holder (E.D. Pa. Sept. 25, 2014) is, to my knowledge, the first federal court decision to actually set aside such a gun disability on Second Amendment grounds.

 

[Jim K]

I think the current push by some liberal politicians to allow ex-convicts to register and vote could backfire if a court decides that if they can exercise one right, they can also exercise another, the right to keep and bear arms. Could be interesting if that issue is ever raised.

Jim