The past few weeks have led to a host of new scholarship, including ones that centrally focus on issues of who the Second Amendment protects. Ben Ramberg, Prior Involuntary Institutionalization Does Not Justify a Lifetime Second Amendment Ban: An Originalist Approach to 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4), Kansas Journal of Law & Pubic Policy, 2021 Forthcoming Abstract: […]
Earlier this summer, in United States v. Perez, a divided panel of the Second Circuit rejected a challenge to 922(g)(5)—the federal law prohibiting gun possession by undocumented immigrants. I missed the case at the time, but Law360 has an interesting write up on the decision and how it fits into broader litigation regarding immigrants’ gun […]
Friend of the blog (and occasional guest blogger) Dru Stevenson has posted a new article on SSRN, “In Defense of Felon-in-Possession Laws,” forthcoming in the Cardozo Law Review. In an era where the felon prohibitor is under attack from both the left (mainly on policy grounds) and the right (mainly on constitutional grounds, at least […]
Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), most individuals with a criminal conviction that carries a potential term of imprisonment of more than one year are barred from possessing firearms. But there are two fairly large caveats (and a few smaller ones I’ll ignore in this post), one constitutional and one statutory. First, many courts are now […]
Ian Ayres and Frederick Vars, Weapon of Choice (Harvard Univ. Press, 2020) Ian Ayres and Fred Vars set forth several innovative proposals for firearms regulation in their 2020 book Weapon of Choice. The first part of the book sets forth and expands upon the authors’ proposals for “Libertarian Gun Control,” i.e., self-imposed legal restrictions on […]
The first time I fired a gun, my dad placed a pillow on my skinny shoulder to cushion the kick and held me firmly from behind. It was a closely supervised moment. The idea that I might have had a legal “right” to just go buy a gun and shoot on my own would not […]
In its June 14 decision in Greer v. United States, the Supreme Court addressed the mens rea requirement for the federal felon-in-possession law at 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) (also called the “felon prohibitor”). (The Court consolidated the Greer case with a similar case, Gary v. United States, on appeal from another Circuit). This opinion was […]
For a local angle this morning, I’m highlighting a new essay on the ambiguities surrounding firearm prohibitions for domestic violence related offenses in North Carolina. It’s a short but interesting piece–check it out! Lanie Summerlin, “May be Unlawful”: Ambiguities Surrounding Federal and State Limits on Firearm Possession by Domestic Abusers in North Carolina, 9 Wake […]
At its conference two weeks from today, the Supreme Court is scheduled to consider whether to accept review in two as-applied challenges to the federal felon prohibitor. In Flick (which we’ve covered here and here), the Eleventh Circuit basically foreclosed as-applied challenges. In Holloway (which we’ve covered here and here), the Third Circuit—one of the […]
In the federal courts of appeals, judges have been increasingly confronted with constitutional challenges to the federal laws that prohibit particular classes of people from possessing firearms. Federal law currently bars nine categories: A person with a conviction for an offense that carries a possible punishment of more than one year in prison A fugitive […]
