Via the Firearms Policy Coalition:
In another victory for Second Amendment civil rights by attorney Alan Gura, a United States District Court found a provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 unconstitutional as applied to some people who, like the plaintiff in the case, are currently law-abiding and not felons, adjudicated as mentally defective, or have a violent criminal history.
This is the second ruling striking down parts of GCA ‘68 in as many weeks.
It’s taken us 47 years to do this but we are finally making progress.
Long overdue. I wonder if there should be specified time periods for various crimes, i.e.: nothing for a nonviolent felony, 20 for a violent felony, never for murder? Or would a judge specify them at sentencing or on release?
If it were to be up to the judges I think your time limits would have to be guidelines, or Justice Sotomayor or Rose Bird (remember her? she was always able to find reversible error in capital cases) would always set the prohibition to the maximum.
The simple standard should be, if you’re a free man, you can do anything else a free man can do. If you’re too dangerous to be trusted with a weapon, then you shouldn’t be walking the streets.
Good reasoning.
Incidentally, that translates into: convicts have the right to arms, once they have served their sentence.
This also translates to anyone who is a danger to self or others at a minimum needs close supervision, if not hospitalization…but once stabilized and released, can continue to own a gun.
Yes, this means that severely depressed people and schizophrenics will have access to such things, if they aren’t supervised–but it should be kept in mind that even from these populations, only a small percentage actually kill themselves or others. This would also mean that someone who has a prescription for the occasional panic attack, or to treat minor depression, won’t have to worry about having their right to keep and bear arms be infringed as well.
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