Conservatives hoping prosecutors will throw the book at the man who was allegedly planning to assassinate Donald Trump at his golf course in Jupiter, Florida last week may end up being disappointed with the prosecution proceedings, in large part because of the conservative pro-gun Supreme Court.
According to a report from Politico, Ryan Routh has been charged with a violation of a federal ban on people with prior felony convictions owning firearms but there are those on pro-Second Amendment side who believe that ban doesn’t pass constitutional muster.
As Politico’s Samantha Latson wrote, “The issue has sown confusion in lower courts, and legal experts say it may soon need to be resolved by the Supreme Court.”
According to UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, “This kind of split among the federal courts is one of the biggest predictors of whether the Supreme Court will step into a controversy.”
As the report notes, since the conservative Supreme Court made its pro-gun ruling in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen case, prosecutors are still feeling their way through a changed weapon law landscape left open by the court.
According to the Politico report, “Routh’s felony record includes a 2002 North Carolina conviction for possessing a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ after he was found with a fully automatic machine gun. He was also convicted in 2010 in North Carolina of possessing stolen goods, authorities say. Those previous convictions mean that Routh is covered by the federal felon-in-possession ban, which carries a 15-year maximum prison sentence. But in recent years, courts have tussled over the continued validity of the ban.”
As Andrew Willinger, the executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, explained, “If you look back at the founding era, the 1800s, you’re not going to find laws from that time that prohibited felons from possessing firearms. This is a relatively recent innovation when we talk about the specific law, the specific strategy of saying that anybody convicted of a serious offense of a certain type is prohibited from having guns for life.”
The report adds, “No federal appeals court has fully struck down the felon-in-possession ban or declared that it cannot be applied to people with prior violent felony convictions. But the conflict in the lower courts over its valid scope — and how to apply the Bruen test — suggests that it’s ‘only a matter of time’ before the Supreme Court steps in to clarify the issue, according to Winkler.”
