Felons and Guns

The left is all in a lather because the DOJ under Trump has restored the gun rights of 22 people who were convicted of felonies- including one they call a “fake elector.” The so-called “fake elector” was pardoned by Trump, so I don’t see how he can be a prohibited person in the first place.

The entire issue is the law allows for people who have been made into prohibited persons being able to apply to have their rights restored.  Congress blocked the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from using federal funds to review individual applications, citing the fact that the program was expensive and took dozens of staff to run. Since when do we judge how expensive it is to seek justice? One could easily make the case that supplying lawyers free of charge is too expensive and only serves to let criminals go free, but that isn’t how we operate as a nation.

This blog has long been opposed to the whole “prohibited person” category because we have redefined “felony” to mean some pretty silly things. For example:

• In Texas, it is a felony to own more than 4 sex toys (chapter 43). 11 of the 2,324 acts that the Texas Legislature thinks are worthy of being called felonies, making you so dangerous as to prohibit your ownership of firearms, have to do with acts that you can commit with or to an oyster. Here is the entire list of felonies for Texas.
• In Utah, it is a felony to go whale hunting in a rented boat.
• In Colorado, incest is a class 4 felony, punishable at the maximum by life in prison. If either participant is under 21, it becomes a class 3 felony. What does that have to do with gun ownership?
• In Montana, it is a felony for a wife to open her husband’s mail.
• In Florida, it is a felony to access WiFi without permission. There was a man who was convicted in 2005 of using a man’s WiFi without permission. It’s also a felony to sell oranges on the street near the beach.
• In Alaska, it is a felony to wake a bear for a picture
• In Georgia, it is a felony to allow your chickens to cross the street.
• In California, it is a felony to set a mousetrap without a hunting license.
• in Tennessee, it is felonious to share your Netflix password.

The reason that the left is pissed is because Trump is using the rules to his advantage. Pam Bondi is claiming that the underlying power to grant relief now rests with Attorney General Pam Bondi, not with the ATF, which neatly sidesteps the Congressional rule against Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) using federal funds to review individual applications.

Dru Stevenson, a law professor at South Texas College of Law Houston who has written about gun rights restoration, said, “The budget rider doesn’t say the federal government can’t do this. It only says ATF can’t. So this is a very lawyerly, splitting-hairs workaround.”

A law resulting from the Enron accounting scandal criminalizes the destruction or concealment of “any record, document, or tangible object” to obstruct a federal investigation. Prosecutors actually brought a federal criminal case against a fisherman under this law when he threw back 72 grouper to supposedly avoid being caught with undersized fish. Prosecutors were trying to convince the Supreme Court that a grouper is a “tangible object” under this law. This crime has a 20-year maximum sentence. In the highlight of the oral argument Justice Scalia noted the potential for 20 years and asked “what kind of mad prosecutor” would use that law in a case like this one? The government lawyer weakly responded that the prosecutors had not asked for a twenty-year sentence against the fisherman. The Court ruled for the fisherman, but the lesson remains: stupid laws and barely restrained federal prosecutors remain a danger to all who love liberty. So if you catch a fish that is too small, Federal prosecutors would allege that you did so to obstruct a Federal investigation, and you are therefore subject to up to 20 years in prison and a lifetime of being denied a key Constitutional right.

Two 16 year old children from North Carolina were facing a total of 14 years in prison for taking nude pictures of themselves and sending them to each other. They were charged with producing child pornography, transmitting child pornography, and possession of child pornography- of themselves. Each of these crimes is a felony, and would earn the children a lifetime label of “sex offender,” meaning that they would not be permitted to be near children, and could only live in communities that are filled with sex offenders. That is how we are protecting children, by convicting them of the crime of looking at themselves while nude, and then forcibly placing them in communities where they will live with actual sexual predators.

The most egregious part of this whole thing is that the law charged them as adults for taking pornographic pictures of themselves, who are legally considered to be children. This means that they are considered to be both adults and children simultaneously. We will call this Schrodinger’s pornography.

That’s why I remain opposed to prohibited person laws. If a person can’t be trusted with their rights, they can’t be trusted to live among the rest of us. I hardly view a person who took a nude picture of themselves being handed a lifetime ban of their rights as being justice, nor is it protecting anyone beyind the paychecks of overzealous prosecutors.