America
one year to possess, buy, or sell firearms or ammuni- tion.
Range in 2020 sued
Progress Made Restoring Gun Rights for Nonviolent Felons
T
Supreme Court decision opens doors, but lower courts remain split. BY VAN CHARLES
wo prohibitions immedi- ately come to mind for most Americans when they hear the words “convicted felon.”
One is the person can’t vote. The
second is the person can’t possess a firearm. The first prohibition is fading as
states lift their bans on felons voting and the second might not be far behind, thanks to the nearly three-year-old deci- sion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that struck down a state law that required a special need to obtain a concealed carry permit. “This is a line you’re seeing the
Supreme Court increasingly start to draw,” said Amy Swearer, a senior legal fellow with The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Cen- ter for Legal and Judicial Studies, and primary author of the founda- tion’s ebook The Essential Second Amendment. Bruen built on previous court rul-
36 NEWSMAX | MARCH 2025
ings, which held that the Second and 14th Amendments protect an indi- vidual’s right to keep and bear arms for self-defense. Yet in late 2024, a pair of cases
put the Bruen results to the test, and both ended with remarkably differ- ent rulings in lower courts. One involved Bryan David Range,
a Pennsylvania man who in 1995 pled guilty to making a false statement to obtain food stamps while struggling at the time to feed his young family. Range’s wife had underreported
his $9-per-hour income on an appli- cation for food stamps that she and Range signed. Range, whose criminal
SWEARER
record included only traf- fic violations and fishing without a license, pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge, paid nearly $3,000 in restitution and court costs, and was sentenced to three years’ probation.
Although his conviction was clas-
sified as a misdemeanor in Pennsyl- vania, it was punishable by up to five years in prison. That conviction precluded him
from possessing a firearm because federal law makes it unlawful for any person who has been convicted in any court of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding
in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, claiming the prohibition violated his Second Amendment rights. The court held that Range’s crime was “serious enough” to deprive him of his rights. While awaiting an
appeal, the Supreme Court ruled on Bruen. Range filed a briefing on that rul- ing’s impact but was again
denied by the District Court. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Third Circuit took up the case and reversed the District Court ruling. Swearer said the Third Circuit got
it right because Range, along with others who have been convicted of a variety of nonviolent crimes, should not be automatically disarmed by the government. “A guy in Pennsylvania who understated in a time of poverty his income gets a misdemeanor, no time in prison, but can never keep and bear arms again? That is absurd,” she said. Just days earlier, a three-judge
panel for the Fourth Circuit sided with a U.S. District Court ruling that a Minnesota man, Edell Jackson, convicted of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, could not pos- sess a firearm. Unlike Range, Jackson had two
previous felony convictions for sec- ond-degree drug trafficking, and in 2021 was arrested with a handgun in his pocket after fleeing from police, who responded to a “shots fired” call. The Eighth Circuit upheld the rul-
ing, with Judge David Stras offer- ing a dissenting opinion, saying that the decision “turns constitutional law upside down, insulating felon- dispossession laws from Second Amendment scrutiny of any kind.”
GSAGI©ISTOCK
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