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Patriot Brief

•  Supreme Court may review felon-in-possession ban affecting nonviolent offenders’ gun rights.

•  Virginia man charged after defensive shooting highlights flaws in blanket firearm prohibitions.

•  Federal courts remain divided on whether nonviolent felons retain Second Amendment protections.

This case exposes the growing tension between self-defense, public safety, and a one-size-fits-all approach to gun prohibitions. Travis Martin didn’t go looking for trouble — trouble came to his doorstep, armed and violent. His response saved a woman from an active assault, yet the legal system now treats him as the criminal because of nonviolent convictions from a quarter-century ago.

Section 922(g)(1) was never designed to distinguish between dangerous offenders and people who’ve long since paid their debt to society. That’s the problem. When the law treats all felonies as equal, it erases context, rehabilitation, and common sense. Courts are split because the reality on the ground doesn’t match the rigidity of the statute.

If the Supreme Court takes up one of these cases, it could finally force clarity — and fairness — into a system that currently punishes defensive action while ignoring actual violent threats. Until then, people like Martin are trapped between constitutional ambiguity and prosecutorial inertia.

From Bearing Arms:

At last Friday’s conference the Supreme Court was slated to discuss three separate cases dealing the federal ban on gun possession for those convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison. All three cases involve non-violent offenders who maintain that Section 922(g)(1) is unconstitutionally broad and violate their Second Amendment rights, and we could learn as early as tomorrow whether the Court will accept any of these cases for review.

That decision could have direct implications for a Henry County, Virginia man who’s now facing charges for possessing a gun as a prohibited person after he used a firearm to defend himself and a woman from a violent home invader earlier this month.

The Henry County Sheriff’s Office reported receiving a call Friday night about a man entering a home with a gun and subsequently being shot. The complaint states that Jessie Rumley arrived uninvited and was hitting a woman on the head with a gun outside on the porch.

Homeowner Travis Martin witnessed the assault, retrieved a gun, and when Rumley entered the house with his gun raised, Martin shot and killed him. Martin is now facing a charge for possessing a gun as a convicted felon.

Martin was convicted of grand larceny and breaking and entering 25 years ago, and local media haven’t reported on any more recent convictions or legal trouble, at least until now.

Martin’s bond was set at just $4,000, which indicates that the judge doesn’t see Martin as a big threat to public safety.

While the crimes Martin was convicted of in 2000 are pretty serious, they’re also not violent in nature. In some appellate courts, that would be enough for Martin to raise a Second Amendment claim as part of his defense. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, though, which has jurisdiction in Virginia, has declared that Section 922(g)(1) is Second Amendment compliant, and only those who’ve been pardoned or were convicted of a crime that itself was later found to be unconstitutional can successfully make an as-applied argument. ln U.S. v. Hunt, decided last December, a three-judge panel concluded that Fourth Circuit precedent foreclosed facial and the vast majority of as-applied challenges, but added that “Section 922(g)(1) would survive Second Amendment scrutiny even if we had the authority to decide the issue anew.”

Heller repeatedly described the core of the Second Amendment right as protecting “law-abiding” citizens.” In contrast, Heller made clear that restrictions on firearms possession by those who are not law-abiding—i.e., felons—are “presumptively lawful.” These limitations arise from the historical tradition.

… Heller instructs that the “pre-existing right” “codified” in the Second Amendment protects firearms possession by the law-abiding, not by felons.

Nothing in Bruen or Rahimi alters this reading of Heller. As for Bruen, our en banc Court has already held that “[n]othing in Bruen abrogated Heller’s extensive discussion of the contours of the scope of the right enshrined in the Second Amendment.” The same is true of Rahimi, which pointedly repeated Heller’s statement that “prohibitions . . . on the possession of firearms by ‘felons and the mentally ill,’ are ‘presumptively lawful.’” We thus conclude that Section 922(g)(1) “regulates activity”—that is, the possession of firearms by felons—that “fall[s] outside the scope of the [Second Amendment] right as originally understood.”

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