U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- Last Thursday, Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and Firearms Policy Foundation (FPF) announced the filing of an important brief with the United States Supreme Court in support of a Petition for Writ of Certiorari in the case of Torres v. the United States. FPC’s brief contains authoritative research showing that the federal ban on firearm possession by nonviolent felons is unconstitutional and not historically supported. It is available online at FPCLegal.org.
Torres v. United States challenges the federal prohibition on firearm ownership by felons, as it applies to nonviolent felons. Specifically, Mr. Torres was convicted of a felony and is subject to a lifetime firearms prohibition based on a DUI offense. After the Ninth Circuit upheld this firearms ban earlier this year, Mr. Torres petitioned the Supreme Court to hear his case.
FPC and FPF filed an amicus brief in support of Mr. Torres’s petition, providing the Court with a thorough historical analysis that proves only violent people have traditionally been prohibited from possessing arms throughout American history. The federal prohibition on nonviolent criminals, like Mr. Torres, is not supported by the original understanding of the Second Amendment.
“The Founders never intended for peaceable persons to be denied the right to keep and bear arms,” said FPC Director of Research, Joseph Greenlee. “We’re hopeful that the Court will grant certiorari and clarify that nonviolent persons, like Mr. Torres, cannot be prohibited from owning a firearm.”
The brief was authored by FPC Director of Research Joseph Greenlee, on behalf of FPC, FPF, California Gun Rights Foundation (CGF), Madison Society Foundation (MSF), and Second Amendment Foundation (SAF).
Firearms Policy Coalition (www.firearmspolicy.org) is a 501(c)4 grassroots nonprofit organization. FPC’s mission is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, especially the fundamental, individual Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, advance individual liberty, and restore freedom. Gun owners and Second Amendment supporters can join the FPC Grassroots Army at JoinFPC.org.
This is where we separate the conservatives from the progressives. We call it Taking Rights Seriously. A progressive law professor wrote a book with that title many years ago where he immediately departed from that course and argued for utilitarian legal philosophy. But conservatives and we remaining liberals aka libertarians take a different path. Enumerated rights are natural rights. The right to keep and bear arms is one such right. In order to impede any right the government must make an argument using one of three levels of logic. Enumerated natural rights may only be curtailed by government using the… Read more »
While I think any disarmament of felons is unconstitutional and indicative of terrible inconsistency in rational for prisons (If they’re still a threat, why are they let out? If they’re not a threat, why are their rights infringed upon? If they we’re never a threat except to themselves, like with the illegal war on drugs, why were they ever in prison?), there’s a major wrinkle in this case: US v. Davis decided just last year that “violent” crime is too ambiguous to withstand constitutional muster. Gorsuch was part of that opinion with the wise latina woman, Justice Breyer, Justice Kagen,… Read more »
I periodically read where people arrested for drug offenses, where they possessed firearms but such weapons were never used against police or others, are charged with “violent felonies”. I am not sure, having been out of the LE game for years, but it sounds as though the lawmakers or the cops just make up definitions or pull them from out of their own butts. If no violence or threat of violence was made, how do they classify them as “violent” felonies?
So is Mr Torres forever restricted from ever owning a car? Felony charges paint with a broad brush just for the convenience of judicial prejudice.
To restrict one’s rights in one court case is to restrict them in all.
Oh, come on now. You are actually arguing for a reason and fact based legal system. Vengeance is far more fun for the progressives.
Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett wrote an excellent dissent in the 7th Circuit case, Kanter v. Barr, arguing that because the 2nd amendment preserves a fundamental individual right the government may only limit it for a “compelling state interest” AND that if such an interest exists the government must tailor its limit in the least restrictive way possible. Barrett argued that although there is a compelling state interest in reducing gun crime, the government has shown no connection between that goal and banning non-violent felons from possessing firearms. Mr. Kanter was convicted of falsely advertising that shoe inserts he… Read more »