It is not among the most high profile cases the U.S. Supreme Court is deciding this term, but a decision Monday involves one that does touch on a prominent issue on the minds of Americans: When is it okay to restrict the right to own a gun?
The case is Voisine v. United States, and combines the cases of Stephen Voisine and William Armstrong who were each found guilty of misdemeanor domestic assaults in the state of Maine. A federal law makes it illegal for anyone with that type of conviction from possessing a gun.
The men presented two arguments to the Supreme Court; one asserting that only a conviction for an intentional domestic assault offense should qualify for the federal gun prohibition and the other saying that the prohibition violates their constitutional right to have a gun.
In accepting the case, the court said it would only deal with the first question and not the constitutional issue. But during oral arguments in February, where justices have the chance to question the lawyers presenting each side, Justice Clarence Thomas brought up the second question anyway.
"This is a misdemeanor violation," he said. "It suspends a constitutional right. Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?"
Ilana Eisenstein, presenting the government's case, said she could not come up with an example, but cited evidence from Congress linking crimes of battery to future violence.
"I understand Your Honor's concern that this is a potential infringement of individual's Second Amendment rights, but I believe that Congress has identified a compelling purpose and has found a reasonable means of achieving that purpose," she said.
Court of Appeals
In the United States, misdemeanors are crimes that generally carry punishments of up to one year in prison. More serious crimes, felonies, carry longer sentences along with the loss of certain rights, such as owning a gun, serving on a jury and voting.
The U.S. Court of Appeals, one step below the Supreme Court, ruled against the defendants in Voisine in 2015. Its opinion cites a Supreme Court ruling in a similar case saying the law barring guns to misdemeanor domestic abusers succeeded in closing a loophole.
"While felons had long been barred from possessing guns, many perpetrators of domestic violence are convicted only of misdemeanors. No ban prevented those domestic abusers from possessing firearms, yet there is a 'sobering' connection between domestic violence and homicide."
The Supreme Court also ruled in 2008, while affirming a Second Amendment right to gun ownership, that there are limits.
"The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms," read the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller.
The Court of Appeals cited the Heller decision in a 2011 ruling involving another case from Maine, which had details similar to the Voisine case with the defendants saying the federal law went against their right to own a gun.
The court rejected their argument, saying the federal law "fits comfortably among the categories of regulations that Heller suggested would be 'presumptively lawful.'"
The law, passed in 1996, stands in stark contrast to current efforts to enact gun control following a mass shooting in Orlando, Florida. Various proposals have been presented in Congress to deny those on federal terror watch lists from buying guns and to expand background checks, but none of those have passed amid a deep divide between Democrats and Republicans.
via Voice of America http://ift.tt/29fCxoM
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