The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 11-4 that those who commit these less severe infractions should not immediately lose their gun rights as a result.
The case began far back in 1995 when Bryan Range of Pennsylvania pled guilty to food stamp fraud. He attempted to acquire $2,458 of food stamps and was sentenced to three years’ probation and mandated to pay restitution and a small fine.
Range also lost his gun rights due to the conviction.
His crime was classified as a Pennsylvania misdemeanor which carried up to five years in prison. According to federal law, this conviction meant he could no longer possess a firearm. Under the statute, it is “unlawful for any person…who has been convicted in any court, of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” to “possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition.”
Range disagreed, believing that a non-violent offender should not automatically be deprived of their Second Amendment rights. That case was filed in 2020 and wound its way through the court system, and on Tuesday he finally received a positive outcome.
The Philadelphia-based Court of Appeals concurred that the plaintiff should not have been deprived of his constitutional gun rights, and his freedom to keep and bear arms was restored.
The court based its ruling largely on last year’s Supreme Court decision in the Bruen case. This monumental ruling established that gun laws must be based on the history and tradition of legal restrictions in the nation.
The majority opinion was penned by Circuit Judge Thomas Hardiman. “After Bruen, we must first decide whether the text of the Second Amendment applies to a person and his proposed conduct. If it does, the government now bears the burden of proof: it must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.”
In his concurring opinion, Judge David Porter wrote that the Second Amendment as part of the Bill of Rights was a reservation of power from interference by the national government.
In other words, a “reserved” power.
One of the four dissenters, Judge Cheryl Ann Krause, wrote that the appeals court usurped lawmakers in its ruling “Where, as here, the legislature has made a reasonable and considered judgment to disarm those who show disrespect for the law it is not the place of unelected judges to substitute that judgment with their own.”
That opinion did not carry the day.
Peter Patterson, Range’s attorney, declared that “we are very pleased that the 3rd Circuit has vindicated the rights of our client by faithfully applying the Supreme Court’s decision.”
There was no comment from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), which is charged with enforcing federal gun laws.
The federal statute prohibits people with sentences longer than a year from possessing weapons, and most of the time this covers felonies. However, there are instances of state misdemeanors, such as that by Range, which receive sentences of longer than a year.
A federal judge previously ruled against Range in 2021, but last year’s Bruen decision by the nation’s high court radically changed the playing field. Justices ruled that restrictions on gun rights must be rooted in the nation’s history of gun regulation.
Legal experts believe this controversy is far from settled and may be presented to the Supreme Court for review.
