Man challenges constitutionality of law prohibiting firearms possession by felons

By Brendan Kirby

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    MOBILE, Alabama (WALA) — A man facing federal gun charges has challenged the constitutionality of a federal statute prohibiting convicted felons from having firearms.

Mobile police arrested Anthony Lee Jackson, 36, of Mobile, in August last year after finding that he had a pair of guns in a car near his home. A federal grand jury indicted him in February based on prior convictions for drug-related offenses and receiving stolen property that made him ineligible to have guns.

Jackson is basing his challenge on a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision handed last year that struck down a New York state law dating to 1911 that required citizens to demonstrate “just cause” in order to obtain a permit to carry concealed guns. That ruling held that gun laws are suspect under the Second Amendment unless the government can “justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. common in the founding era.”

Assistant Federal Defender Colin Fitzpatrick argues in a court filing that laws disarming convicted felons did not emerge until the 20th century – well after the framers wrote the Constitution.

“Mr. Jackson is a non-violent, loyal, American citizen who has completed all aspects of his criminal sanction,” he wrote. “There is no historical tradition of stripping such a person of their individual right to bear arms as codified by the Second Amendment.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Beaverstock ordered the U.S. Attorney’s Office to respond by Sept. 19.

The motion to dismiss comes Beaverstock rejected a different challenge differeto the indictment, based on allegations that the city’s gunshot-detection system known as ShotSpotter – which led to Jackson’s arrest – is unreliable and violated the defendant’s constitutional rights against unreasonable searches.

The latest challenge comes as federal courts have begun to grapple with the impact of the high court’s June 2022 decision in the New York case. A report earlier this summer by the Giffords Law Center for the Prevention of Gun Violence counted 212 legal challenges to gun regulations from June 2022 to February. Judges have struck down gun laws 33 times. Among them:

In February, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down a federal law prohibiting firearms possession by people subject to restraining orders in domestic abuse cases. The Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case in the fall.

A federal judge in Texas in September 2022 struck down a law prohibiting people under indictment from having guns. That case is currently on appeal to the 5th Circuit.

In June, the 3rd U.S. District Court of Appeals in Philadelphia ruled that the federal felon-in-possession-of-a-firearm law was unconstitutional as it applied to a man named Bryan Range, although the majority opinion indicated that the decision was “a narrow one” involving a mam who had been convicted in 1995 lying about his income to obtain food stamps.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeal, which has jurisdiction over Alabama, previously ruled on the issue in 2010 upholding a defendant’s conviction under the felon-possession statute. But Fitzpatrick maintains that the Supreme Court’s ruling last year changed the legal framework.

The Justice Department, in other cases, has pointed out that the majority opinion D.C. v. Heller in 2008 explicitly listed the law banning firearms possession by felons in a list of gun restrictions are “presumptively lawful” regulatory measures.

But Fitzpatrick argued that under current precedent, the court must undertake a historical analysis of whether any gun restriction has a basis from the time of the founders. He wrote that the government cannot demonstrate such justification. He reiterated that there were no laws in the 18th and 19th centuries prohibiting former prisoners from having guns.

“After all, the potential danger posed by felons’ access to firearms would hardly have been foreign to the Founders,” he wrote.

Fitzpatrick noted that early state militias did not exempt convicted felons and, in fact, required white men of certain ages to serve.

“As these acts show, felons in the founding era not only were permitted to possess firearms, they actually were legally required to do so,” he wrote. “Given this legal obligation, holding that felons lack Second Amendment rights would be textually and historically untenable.”

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