Anti-Gunners Should Be Careful What They Wish For
U.S.A. – “Matthew Schindler, the defense attorney for Kneko Tyray Moore, a convicted felon, states that the definition of ‘the people’ in the Second Amendment is not limited to law-abiding responsible citizens,” a Thursday letter to the editor in The Oregonian summarizes. “Schindler’s theory is that the government can’t demonstrate that the criminal charge is not consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulations.”
Not so fast, say legal critics.
“The Supreme Court ‘characterized the holders of Second Amendment rights as “law-abiding” citizens no fewer than fourteen times,” Portland federal prosecutor Leah Bolstad argued back, claiming that “notably excludes convicted felons,” and citing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s admissions in the Bruen decision that the ruling “doesn’t disturb ‘the longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.’”
What’s absent from that argument are Founding-era citations to back it up and connect “longstanding” to the founding era. That’s because they didn’t.
From Justice Breyer’s dissent (arguably the one thing he got right):
“‘[P]rohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill [and] laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms’ have their origins in the 20th century… ‘Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons.’”
It’s not a stretch to surmise they did not have a major recidivism problem with murderers because they were hanged, and lesser felons received long and hard punishments. That, and an armed populace raised in a militia culture that would not tolerate, let alone breed predators and dependents meant the social cancer of collectivist prosecutors turning known threats loose to continue victimizing the productive citizenry just wasn’t the issue modern-day collectivists have turned it into.
And like the maxim (OK, mine) says, anyone who can’t be trusted with a gun can’t be trusted without a custodian.
Oblivious to all this, the letter writer continues:
“Given this logic – that there is no limitation on the types of people th
Article from LewRockwell
