PA Bill Number: HB335
Title: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons.
Description: In inchoate crimes, further providing for prohibited offensive weapons. ...
Last Action: Removed from table
Last Action Date: May 1, 2024
Justice Thomas Asks: Why Are Second Amendment Rights So Easily Taken Away? :: 03/25/2016
Justice Thomas had not asked a question during oral arguments since 2006 when, during the arguments in Voisine v. United States on February 29, he posed a question to the government’s counsel, Assistant to the Solicitor General Ilana Eisenstein.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas “speak[s] truth to power” on gun rights, but unfortunately power couldn’t care less. (Susan Walsh-Pool/Getty Images)
Immediately, the anti-Thomas press, always eager to portray the justice as a clueless incompetent (after all, he rejects most of the leftist notions about the role of government), indulged in nasty headlines such as “It Speaks!” Imagine the furor if a leftist icon were called “it.”
Exactly what is Voisine about and what did Justice Thomas ask?
The case deals with a seemingly dry question of statutory interpretation: Does a misdemeanor crime that requires only a showing of recklessness qualify as a crime of domestic violence under 18 U.S. Code Sections 921 (a)(33)(A) and 922 (g)(9)?
That latter part of the U.S. criminal code is known at the Domestic Violence Offender Gun Ban, a.k.a the Lautenberg Amendment, signed into law in 1996 by President Clinton. It makes it a felony for anyone who has been convicted of a domestic violence misdemeanor ever to have anything to do with firearms: shipping or transporting them, owning or using them, even possessing ammunition.
One strike and you’re out under this law.
In the two cases from Maine joined in Voisine, the defendants had been convicted of reckless domestic violence misdemeanors and were later found in possession of firearms, leading to their prosecution for violating the federal gun ban. They moved to have the cases dismissed on the grounds that the Maine statute, under which someone can be convicted for intentional, knowing or merely reckless conduct isn’t covered by the Lautenberg amendment. The trial court ruled against their motions and they appealed to the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which affirmed with one judge dissenting. (If you want much more detail about the case, Rory Little’s post on SCOTUSblog has it.)
Ms. Eisenstein had just finished her argument that the First Circuit’s decision should be upheld when Justice Thomas spoke up: “Can you think of another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?”
