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May 15, 2024 By Mark Chesnut

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuithistorically known as anything but gun friendlyhas ruled that the federal ban on gun possession by some criminals who have served more than a year in prison is unconstitutional. In a 2-to-3 ruling, the 9th Circuit on May 9 overturned the unlawful gun possession conviction of Steven Duarte, a nonviolent offender who had served prison time, citing the landmark 2022 Supreme Court ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In the case U.S. v. Duarte, Judge Carlos Bea wrote for the majority: Bruen instructs us to assess all Second Amendment challenges through the dual lenses of text and history. If the Second Amendment's plain text protects the person, his arm, and his proposed course of conduct, it then becomes the Government's burden to prove that the challenged law is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.

In the end, the court decided the government failed to provide a historical precedent that applied to this case.

A more faithful application of Bruen requires the Government to proffer Founding-era felony analogues that are distinctly similar to Duarte's underlying offenses and would have been punishable either with execution, with life in prison, or permanent forfeiture of the offender's estate, Judge Bea wrote.

The case revolves around Duartes arrest in March 2020 in Inglewood, California. Police saw a car run a stop sign, and when they attempted to stop the car Duarte, a passenger in the back seat, tossed a handgun out of the window. Duarte had previously been convicted of vandalism, possession of a controlled substance, evading a peace officer and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to 51 months in prison after jurors found him guilty of breaking the law banning gun possession by felons and by others convicted of crimes carrying penalties of more than a year in prison.

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Explaining the courts reasoning, Judge Bea wrote: At step one of Bruen, we easily conclude that Duartes weapon, a handgun, is an arm within the meaning of the Second Amendments text and that Duartes proposed course of conductcarrying [a] handgun publicly for self-defense falls within the Second Amendments plain language, two points the Government never disputes. He also wrote: Because Duarte is an American citizen, he is part of the people whom the Second Amendment protects. Concerning the courts findings regarding the second Bruen standard, the reasoning was equally forthright.

At Bruens second step, we conclude that the Government has failed to prove that [the laws] categorical prohibition, as applied to Duarte, is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the Second Amendment right, the judge wrote. Judge Bea, a George W. Bush appointee to the court, was joined on the majority by Judge Lawrence VanDyke, who was appointed by Donald Trump. The dissenting vote was cast by Judge Milan Smith, also a George W. Bush appointee.

In his dissent, Judge Smith wrote: The majority reads Bruen, a Supreme Court decision reviewing New Yorks gun licensing regime, as an invitation to uproot a longstanding prohibition on the possession of firearms by felons. One daylikely sooner, rather than laterthe Supreme Court will address the constitutionality of 922(g)(1) or otherwise provide clearer guidance on whether felons are protected by the Second Amendment. But it is not our role as circuit judges to anticipate how the Supreme Court will decide future cases.

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As with most court decisions, this one still has a long way to go before anything changes concerning the law. Its likely that prosecutors will ask the court to grant an en banc review of the case so the full 9th Circuit can consider the matter.

Freelance writer and editor Mark Chesnut is the owner/editorial director at Red Setter Communications LLC. An avid hunter, shooter and political observer, he has been covering Second Amendment issues and politics on a near-daily basis for nearly 25 years.

If you have any thoughts or comments on this article, wed love to hear them. Email us at FirearmsNews@Outdoorsg.com.

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Circuit Court Rules for Nonviolent Criminal In 2nd Amendment Case - Firearms News

A Brooklyn man has been sentenced to ten years in state prison for legally purchasing gun parts and assembling weapons in his home, his lawyer tells the Sun. Dexter Taylor began assembling firearms as a hobby during the pandemic.

This defendant allegedly acquired a massive arsenal of homemade ghost guns that are as real and dangerous as traditional firearms, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said when Taylor was arrested in 2022. In total, Taylor had built 13 firearms in his home and had in his possession at the time of his arrest several magazines, as well as casing, bullets, and gunpowder.

It was excessive, Taylors lawyer, Vinoo Varghese, tells the Sun of his clients ten year sentence. Taylor was found guilty by a jury on April 22 on multiple charges, including second-degree criminal possession of a loaded weapon, four counts of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, five counts of criminal possession of a firearm, and second-degree criminal possession of five or more firearms, among other things.

The D.A. asked for ten years, Mr. Varghese said. Of the judge, he added: She could have sentenced him to three-and-a-half.

The jurist in the case, Judge Abena Darkeh, famously said during Taylors trial that his lawyers could not make arguments based on his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Mr. Varghese told RedState that Judge Darkeh said at one point: Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesnt exist here. So you cant argue Second Amendment. This is New York.

Taylor began assembling the firearms in his spare time as a hobby. He is professionally a software engineer and previously was a member in good standing at the Westside Rifle and Pistol Range in Manhattan, according to a fundraising page for Taylors legal defense fund that has raised nearly $175,000.

In an interview with RedState, Taylor said he was not amassing weapons as the prosecution alleged. Rather, he is a hobbyist who was fascinated by the intricate workings of firearms.

I found out that you can actually legally buy a receiver and you can machine that receiver to completion, and you buy your parts and you put them together and youve got a pistol or a rifle, he said.

And once I saw that I was hooked, he added. I was like, This is the coolest thing ever. This is the most cool thing you could possibly do in your machine shop.

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Amateur Gunsmith Told by N.Y. Judge the Second Amendment 'Doesn't Exist' in Her Courtroom Gets 10 Years in Prison - The New York Sun

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Ninth Circuit finds that convicted felons also have Second Amendment rights - White Mountain Independent

Todays gun control politicians are making it clear. Its not just guns they despise. There are two other primary obstacles to civil disarmament that they loathe.

One is the Second Amendment itself. The other, well, its you the gun owner.

It wasnt that long ago when President Barack Obama lambasted gun owners who refused to roll over to his gun control agenda. Stumping for his first election to The White House, he told fundraisers at a San Francisco event of smalltown Pennsylvania voters that were left behind, especially by the political elites.

And its not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who arent like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations, President Obama said in 2008. Interestingly, it was former U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), later Secretary of State, who rebuked him.

I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America, she said. His remarks are elitist and out of touch.

Of course, that was before she labeled half of America a basket of deplorables in 2016 when she was making her second run for the Oval Office.

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trumps supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? former Secretary Clinton said. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.

Those were also a whole lot of gun owners who couldnt buy into her gun control agenda which included banning the modern sporting rifle (MSR), the most popular-selling centerfire rifle in America.

Fast-forward to 2024 and senior Democratic Members of Congress are repeating the same epithets. These were also the same politicians who were the vanguard of President Obamas, Secretary Clintons, and President Joe Bidens gun control agendas. Turns out, insulting and dismissing gun owners as lesser Americans is a popular attitude among Blue State elites.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was rebuked as an elite at an Oxford Union debate on April 25 when she said that certain Americans are poor souls who are looking for some answers. Their biggest sin, according to the Speaker Emeritus, is not bowing to the orthodoxy of the gun control elite.

These poor souls ... are looking for some answers, Rep. Pelosi said. Weve given them to them, but theyre blocked by some of their views on guns they have the three Gs: Guns, Gays, and God.

Rep. Pelosi didnt think that was enough. She said, cultural issues cloud some of their reception of an argument that really is in their interest.

Did you catch that? Gun owners who reject a politically-driven gun control agenda arent thinking in their own self-interests. After all, every other gun control idea especially the most recent overreaching of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to run roughshod on the separation of powers to write criminal law in the place of Congress isnt a bad idea in her mind. She believes President Bidens big government abuse of the rulemaking process is good for voters. Theyre just not bright enough to see it for themselves.

What makes it more insulting, Rep. Pelosi was making that argument at the Oxford Union, a debating society thats held at Britians Oxford University. She trashed American voters on an overseas stage that pitches itself to hosting internationally prominent individuals across politics, academia and popular culture. That stage has hosted President Ronald Reagon, Mother Theresa, and Albert Einstein. It has also hosted former Secretary of State and Climate Envoy John Kerry, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Stacey Abrams and deposed and murdered former Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi.

Thats rare air for a former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Shes not alone in her ideas. Rep. Jerry Nadler (R-N.Y.) last week thought he was a tad smarter than the Founding Fathers, including James Madison, who wrote the Second Amendment, and the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark Heller decision, that upheld the Second Amendment as a right belonging to the people, not the government.

The Second Amendment reads quote A well-regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State, the right to bear arms shall not be infringed, Rep. Nadler said during a hearing last week. It is clearly a right, the Founding Fathers, the Framers were opposed to standing armies. They thought that those were instruments of tyranny and that militia what should be had and the Second Amendment was the guarantee, was framed as a guarantee that you could have a militia, a well-regulated militia, being safe in the security of a free state.

That was the understanding for 200 years until the radical Supreme Court in the Heller decision upended 200 years of Constitutional interpretation and said that Second Amendment has nothing to do with militias, he continued. Its a personal and basically unlimited right. The Supreme Court was wrong in that decision.

Except, thats not what the Second Amendment says. He cherry-picked the parts that support his big-government and gun control agendas. Madison and the U.S. Supreme Court must have collectively rolled their eyes at his continued ignorance to the Bill of Rights. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wasnt about to let him off the hook.

Apologies to Ranking Member Nadler if this isnt what he stated but I think he might have left out some key words when he read the Second Amendment, and Ill read it here, Rep. Massie explained. A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. And Im not sure if I heard him say the people. Which applies to all of the people as we well know, and I yield back.

Its insulting to American citizens when Members of Congress intentionally leave the people out of the rights they are endowed with by their Creator. Its insulting to voters when elite politicians disregard them as bitter clingers, deplorables or poor souls who cant be trusted to think, act and vote for themselves. Worse than that, it is breaking faith with the very people these elites are elected to represent and protect their rights from an overreaching government.

Those poor souls the more than 100-plus million gun owning homes in America and the industry that provides the means for exercising their Second Amendment rights know that no one is buying the gun control theyre selling.

Republished with permission from NSSF.

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To gun control elitists, 'bitter clingers' are also 'poor souls' - Buckeye Firearms Association

On May 9, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit published a split decision vacating the conviction of Steven Duarte for violating 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1).

18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) makes it a crime for any person to possess a firearm if he has been convicted of an offense punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year.

Duarte, who has five prior nonviolent state criminal convictions all punishable for more than a year was charged and convicted under 922(g)(1) after police saw him toss a handgun out of the window of a moving car. Duarte now challenges the constitutionality of his conviction. He argues that, under the Supreme Courts recent decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), 922(g)(1) violates the Second Amendment as applied to him, a nonviolent offender who has served his time in prison and reentered society. We agree.

Judge Carlos T. Bea wrote the opinion. Judge Lawrence VanDyke concurred. Judge M. Smith, Jr. dissented.

Duarte had been previously convicted of five nonviolent crimes in California. Under California law, each offense could result in a prison term of more than one year, making them felonies, according to federal law. The five convictions were for the following:

Given the history of the Ninth Circuit, it is almost certain the government of California will ask for an en banc (all the judges) review of this case. En banc is likely to be granted.

En banc may be put on hold pending the Supreme Court decision in the Rahimi case, due in June. The Rahimi case has some similarities to this case. The Supreme Court decision in Rahimi will be a binding precedent. It makes sense to wait until the end of June to see what the Supreme Court will do with Rahimi.

The character of Duarte is impossible to determine from what little we are told about his case. Duartes character should have nothing to do with the determination of whether 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(1) is unconstitutional. It is the nature of the system that multiple charges be dropped during plea bargaining in exchange for a guilty plea on one charge. At first glance, a recent California Supreme Court decision about evading a police officer seems relevant.

On May 2, the California Supreme Court issued an opinion striking down some instances of evading a police officer as probable cause for detaining an individual.

Duartes charges are quite different.

The felony convictions of evading a police officer on Duartes record are almost certainly for evading a police officer while in a vehicle. In essence, this means fleeing police pursuit in a vehicle. Those convictions are probably California Vehicle Code 2800.2, felony reckless evading. The charge is a wobbler, meaning it can be charged as a misdemeanor or a felony.

The California Supreme Court decision on evading a police officer does not affect charges of fleeing from a police officer in a vehicle and is irrelevant to the Duarte case.

We know Duarte has had several unwelcome contacts with law enforcement in Southern California. His case has become a test case for restoring Second Amendment Rights.

Republished with permission from AmmoLand.

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Ninth Circuit panel: Convicted felons have Second Amendment rights - Buckeye Firearms Association