Firearm Ban After Assault Left Intact by U.S. High Court

[Purveyor]

By Greg Stohr - Nov 4, 2013

The U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up a new gun-rights case, turning away an appeal from a man barred from owning a firearm because of a misdemeanor assault conviction 45 years ago.

The appeal by Jefferson Wayne Schrader contended that the ban violated the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms.

The justices have repeatedly turned away gun-rights appeals in the last three years. The court hasn’t considered a Second Amendment case since 2010, when it said people have a right to have a handgun in the home for self-defense purposes.

Schrader was convicted of misdemeanor assault and battery after getting into a fistfight with a gang member in Annapolis, Maryland, in 1968. He received a $100 fine and no jail time. Since then, he says, he served in Vietnam, received an honorable discharge from the Navy and has had no meaningful encounters with law enforcement in the last 45 years.

Schrader sued after he failed federal background checks while trying to acquire a shotgun and a handgun in 2008. The Bellevue, Washington-based Second Amendment Foundation joined Schrader in pressing the suit.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-04/firearm-ban-after-assault-left-intact-by-u-s-high-court.html

[gopiscrap]

1. Excellent!

[davepc]

2. Once you lose a right you should never get it back EVER

This is what I believe as a Democrat.

[Revanchist]

4. Does that include voting rights for former felons?

I guess all those states that restore the right to vote after the sentence is served and parole is completed should change their laws then.

[petronius]

6. Posts like this make me glad that I recently

upgraded to a research-quality sarcasmograph...

[Eleanors38]

5. What other rights should be lost permanently? Voting? Redress? Speech? Crickets?

[petronius]

3. Sounds like a strange glitch in MD law - I think we had some threads

about it in the past. I do agree that it's an unjust and inappropriate outcome, but it seems to be something for MD to fix rather than the USSC. Or Congress needs to clarify the misdemeanors that lead to disqualification.

---Snip---

Federal law bars firearms possession by people convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison, or more than two years if the crime is a misdemeanor.

A federal appeals court in Washington unanimously said that provision applied to Schrader because Maryland law doesn’t specify a maximum penalty for assault.

---Snip---

Hope this guy still has an opportunity to at least petition to get his rights restored (or perhaps I should say recognized)...