Thursday - November 13, 2008

SCOTUS to hear another gun issue

Thank God, the Supremes are finally going to maybe make a decision on the Lautenberg Amendment. It only took 12 years for this most blatantly unconstitutional proviso to get to the top bench. If you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, here it is:

People who are convicted of major felonies like kidnapping, murder, and armed robbery, are usually no longer allowed to own guns. People who get in fights or who smack others around in public get charged with Assault. Or Battery. If convicted, they pay a small fine and perhaps serve a weekend or two in the county lock up, because assault is a misdemeanor offense. Petty crime. But if you get convicted of beating up your domestic partner, a crime called Domestic Assault (or Domestic Battery) that is also a misdemeanor, you lose your rights to own a gun. Forever. That’s the little amendment Frank Lautenberg (Dipshit - NJ) put into the Gun Control Act of 1996, which was an extension of GCA 1968. . Only the way old Frankie worded it, it applies to any DA conviction ever. Even ones that happened before this law was passed. That means Lautenberg’s bit is a “retroactive law”. Or, as lawyers would put it, “ex post facto”.

Look up ex post facto in the Constitution. It’s right there under the heading that says NO EFFING WAY BRO.

The other problem is that, at least as of 1996, only 17 states had a crime on their books specifically dealing with domestic violence. All the other states lumped domestic violence under the plain old violence category. Thus, this illegal federal law doesn’t actually apply in most of the country. Which is another one of those irritating bits that the Constitution says is a bad thing; all the federal laws apply to all the states and all the people.

So a test case has bubbled up through the system, and now the 9 Robes of Reason will have to decide, again, whether a part of the Constitution that couldn’t be clearer is actually clear enough.

A Marion County, West Virginia man named Randy Hayes was, to his stunned amazement, charged with felony gun possession in early 2005. To tell the full story we must go back to 1994 and an unfortunate incident in which he pled guilty to misdemeanor battery charge stemming from an argument with his wife. The marriage failed and ended in divorce shortly thereafter. (Drew: Hayes was given 1 year’s probation)

Leap forward a decade and our story resumes with Mr. Hayes and his ex-wife angry with him over a disagreement about their son. In her anger, she called the police informing them he had a firearm. The police arrived and found a family heirloom Winchester rifle under Mr. Hayes bed. Hayes was arrested on the spot and was stunned as they cuffed him. Hayes was completely unaware that he was under any legal disability to own firearms. You see, when he pled guilty in 1994 , there was no Lautenberg Amendment, and what he pled to was a misdemeanor. However, Lautenberg is a retroactive law.

Troy Giatras was retained as legal counsel to Mr. Hayes. Giatras commented, “Because he only pleaded guilty in 1994 to battery, not domestic battery. But the federal court interpreted it as domestic battery because it was against a family member.” He continued, “In 1994 and in 1995, he was legally able to have a gun, the 1996 law was applied to him retroactively, but he didn’t even know it.”

The case went before the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia in October of 2006. The court over turned the original decision convicting Hayes, but the U.S. Justice Department decided to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court agreed in April to hear the case later this year.

Giatras made the point that this case will be very important as it will help settle the constitutionality concerning laws which retroactively affect the American people and, of course, infringements on our Second Amendment rights.

I’m not holding my breath. I fully expect the Robes to play Solomon and try and slice the baby neatly when they have no need to do so. They’ll toss out Haye’s disarming, because he wasn’t convicted of Domestic Battery specifically, just regular Battery. Then they’ll toss out the ex post facto proviso on Lautenberg. They won’t approach the permanent loss of rights over a misdemeanor conviction at all, even though that’s the core issue here. And that’s the pussy kind of justice we’ll have to deal with. Hell, in 3 years we’ll be blessing them for what will be seen by then as a radical, anti-government decision.

A little bit more on this case here, and here, and you can always search up more.

From what I understand, another aspect of this Lautenberg Amendment thing is that you lose your guns if a family member gets a restraining order placed on you. No trial, no actual criminal charges, no chance for you to speak up in court; restraining orders are issued without your need to be there. And your guns get taken away. Welcome to America, land of Due Process and No Excessive Punishment.

This is the 4th challenge for the Lautenberg Amendment. The first case, US v. Emerson, addressed only the restraining order aspect. Emerson overturned Lautenberg in 1999, but that was reversed in 2001. 3 other cases challenged it’s ex post facto nature, but they were rejected by the court.

The full text of Lautenberg can be read here. It is short, but has so damn much legalese and subparagraphing that it’s very hard to read.

( In case you can’t tell, I’m against this law 100%. I’m also against Lautenberg, 200%. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve voted against him, but he keeps coming back like a herpes sore. )

Posted by Drew458     on 11/13/2008 at 02:56 PM   
Filed Under: • Guns and Gun Control •  
• Comments (3) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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