Category: Guns

There’s really no circumstance where I think a lifetime ban on a fundamental right should be constitutional for a misdemeanor conviction, but one of the gravest outrages perpetrated by the federal courts is allowing the ex-post-facto nature of the Lautenberg Amendment to stand. John Richardson has a good example in regards to why. As far as I know, there’s never been any direct Supreme Court ruling on the ex-post facto issue in regards to Lautenberg, but it seems pretty clear to me that stripping a constitutional right post-conviction, without any further due process, ought to be a violation. One might argue that you get around the ex-post facto issue by virtue of the fact that an action is required, namely gun possession with a misdemeanor DV conviction post the date of the act, but when the act of possession is protected by the Constitution, it’s hard to see how that doesn’t amount to punishment after the fact.

The totality of our opponents loss in Heller and McDonald probably didn’t really hit me until I saw this post over at Volokh on a new law school textbook on the Second Amendment. Understand that the Second Amendment is now a hot area in mainstream constitutional law. The textbook is co-authored by Nicholas Johnson (Fordham), Michael O’Shea (Oklahoma City), George Mocsary (Connecticut), and Dave Kopel (Denver). This is an academic work that’s the culmination of many years of research into this topic. At first, it was not widely accepted, and now it’s mainstream constitutional law. All new law students will be learning this version of history, the true version, our version, rather than the revisionist claptrap whipped up by our opponents.