JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
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Yep.....even the Supreme Court realizes that it is the violent, repeat offenders who are the problem.....they let stand a lower court ruling restoring the gun rights to non-violent criminal offenders....
Maybe if the anti-gunners cared more about stopping actual, violent criminals....we could lower the crime rate even more than we have....
Supreme Court agrees non-violent misdemeanor crimes may not strip 2A rights
This week, the court declined to take up an appeal sought by the Obama-era Justice Department in the cases of Binderup v. the U.S. Attorney General and Suarez v. the U.S. Attorney General. Four Justices were needed to grant the petition but only two, Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor, felt the court should hear the case.
Last September, a 15-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Pennsylvania disagreed 8-7, siding with Binerup and Suarez in a lengthy 174-page decision. In the end, that panel cited the relatively minor sentences passed on the two men as the reason to disregard their crimes as being serious enough to void their gun rights.
Binderup pleaded guilty in 1996 in Pennsylvania to a misdemeanor charge of corrupting a minor — a 17-year-old he was in a relationship with — to which he received three years’ probation and a $300 fine rather than the maximum of five years in prison.
Suarez pleaded guilty in 1990 to unlawfully carrying a handgun without a license in Maryland, which could have resulted in as much as three years in prison but instead received an 180-day suspended sentence and $500 fine.
While neither spent a day in jail, both lost their firearms rights under a federal law that treats those convicted of state misdemeanors which can be punished by two or more years in jail as prohibited firearms possessors.
In the decades since their voluntary pleas, both men have been crime free and wanted to obtain legal guns to defend themselves and their families within their homes, forcing them to take up the matter in the courts.
So i wonder if this will negate the provision in federal law that strips gun rights from those charged with domestic violence crimes since it does not require a conviction?