“Felons are those who have abused the rights of the people. And as outlined above, this Nation has a ‘longstanding’ tradition of exercising its right—as a free society—to exclude from ‘the people’ those who squander their rights for crimes and violence,” Counts said. “Consistent with Heller and Bruen, the Second Amendment should be no different here.”
The federal prohibition on convicted felons possessing guns is in line with the Second Amendment.
That’s the conclusion reached by the judge who recently ruled the ban on those under felony indictment receiving guns was not. Judge David Counts of the U.S. District of Western Texas found that contrary to the indictment ban, the convicted felon ban survived scrutiny under the Supreme Court’s new Bruen standard.
“Bruen did shake up the legal landscape,” Counts wrote in his ruling. “And the Court believes that faithfully following Bruen’s new framework casts doubt on some firearm regulations. But the regulation in this case is not one of them.”
The ruling is the first to deal with the federal prohibition on felons having guns. Counts’ analysis of the issue and his framework for upholding the law could prove to be influential as other courts grapple with how to apply Bruen‘s text-and-tradition standard to American gun laws.
By Stephen Gutowski
