Gun Rights Lawsuit Tests Limit of US Supreme Court Decision | CLIP | Facts Matter

Four days ago, there was a major development in the ongoing battle over the Second Amendment with a federal court ruling against a woman who is trying to restore her Second Amendment rights. And the details of this particular case, they reveal an underlying battle that's being waged right now in courtrooms across the whole country, wherein you have American citizens using a Supreme Court decision which came down just last year to try and claw back the gun rights that have been stripped away from us over the past 100 years. However, in order to explain what happened in this particular case, as well as what it means for the country going forward, let's back up for a quick moment and start at the very beginning. To start with, the US Supreme Court decision which started all this was the famous Bruin case, which for your reference, was the first gun rights related case to be heard in the US Supreme Court in well over a decade. Let me give you a brief refresher on what that particular case was all about. You see, up until last year, up until the year 2022, if you were a resident of New York, it was almost impossible to get a concealed carry permit. That's because the state of New York has been, for the past 111 years, been forcing people to prove that they had a quote-unquote special need for self-protection. The relevant statute in New York was the Sullivan Act of 1911. In that particular law, it made it such that concealed carry permits can be issued at the sole discretion of local law enforcement. And in order for a citizen to obtain one of these concealed carry permits, he or she must quote, "...demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession." Meaning, in practical terms, that for the past 111 years, only if the local police agreed that you had a special need for self-protection would they give you a license to conceal carry your gun outside the home. And proving that you had a special need wasn't easy. It didn't matter whether you lived in a high-crime area, and it didn't matter if you got robbed multiple times before, unless you were an actual celebrity or you were a security guard, you were just out of luck. It was nearly impossible to get a concealed carry permit. Now, eventually, in the year 2018, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association, they filed a lawsuit against the superintendent of the New York State Police Force, arguing that the gun laws that were on the books for the past 111 years were actually, all along, And after several years of legal back and forth, the case finally wound up in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, where the conservative majority on the court, they ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Specifically, Justices Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, they all ruled that New York's law was indeed unconstitutional and that the ability of a person to carry a pistol in public was a constitutional right under the Second Amendment. Furthermore, in the opinion statement that was written by Justice Clarence Thomas, there was a sentence which opened the door for other gun restricting laws across the nation to be rolled back. Here's specifically what Justice Clarence Thomas wrote as a part of the court's majority opinion. Quote, The burden falls on the defendants, meaning the government, to show that New York's proper cause requirement is consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them. With these principles in mind, the court concludes that respondents have failed to meet their burden to identify an American tradition justifying New York's proper cause requirement. And so, with this opinion statement, Justice Clarence Thomas established a new legal precedent. Moving forward, federal, state, and local governments will have to prove in court that their restrictive gun laws are, quote, consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. And so, with this decision, as well as with this new legal standard that was established by the U.S. Supreme Court, well, the door was flung open for Americans to begin challenging restrictive gun laws across the whole country in the hope of having them overturned, no matter how old they were. And indeed, that's exactly what happened. Lawsuits began to spring up across the whole nation, which brings us neatly along to the case of Ms. Melinda Vincent. You see, Melinda is a woman out in the state of Utah who is a social worker currently running her own clinic. She's also a single mother who wants to own a gun in order to protect her family. That's all well and good. Very typical American story. Except there's a catch. 15 years ago, Melinda pleaded guilty to a felony charge of check fraud. Here's what happened back in the year 2008 amidst the backdrop of the global financial crisis. Quote, Melinda Vincent wrote a fraudulent check for $498.12 at a grocery store in 2008 when she was homeless and fighting off a drug addiction. She faced up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine. But she pleaded guilty and was sentenced to probation without imprisonment. And so, essentially, Melinda wrote a bad check 15 years ago. And because of that, to this very day, she can no longer own a gun. Despite the fact that she has turned her life around. She's now a small business owner. Because she still is technically a convicted felon, she is unable to own a gun ever as per a 1961 federal law. And as such, Melinda filed a lawsuit against the federal government back in the year 2020 arguing that the prohibition against her was unconstitutional. However, after bouncing around the court for about a year, in October of 2021, a federal judge dismissed the case. But then, the next year, in 2022, you had the landmark Bruin decision at the U.S. Supreme Court, which, as we just explained earlier, turned on its head the Second Amendment legal discussion in this country. Because after the Bruin decision, the onus was no longer on the individual, but rather it was the government's job to prove that they have a longstanding historical precedent to take away someone's gun rights. And so, Melinda used this new standard in her appeal to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, which just for your reference, has jurisdiction over the states of Colorado, Kansas, Utah, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Essentially, in her appeal, Melinda was arguing that it was unconstitutional to bar her, a convicted felon of a nonviolent crime, from ever owning a gun because there was no longstanding historical precedent for such a thing. In her appeal brief, Ms. Vinson detailed that for much of U.S. history, forgers simply had to pay back the amount stolen in double. Some states added on hard labor or solitary imprisonment as punishment. Most aggressively, Delaware gave forgers a public whipping of 39 lashes, plus an hour in the pillory, and then finally cut off the soft parts of their ears. But none of the original colonies deprived forgers of firearms. At its essence, Melinda's argument here was that the U.S. Supreme Court's Bruin decision shifted the burden of proof over to the government, such that it was now the government's burden to show why exactly she was still deprived of her Second Amendment rights. And they had to do so by showing a clear historical precedent for such a thing, which she argues doesn't exist. In fact, here was what Melinda's lawyer said during arguments. Quote, My client has made a remarkable transformation. Nothing in her record indicates she would be violent. Instead, her record suggests she would be a responsible gun owner. Under the Bruin decision, the government can't justify any ban on firearms without a valid historical precedent. The historical analysis that Bruin calls for has never been applied for this situation. Bruin set forth a test, and that's the test that needs to govern this case. On the flip side, though, you had the lawyer representing the federal government argue that in the past, the U.S. Supreme Court did uphold laws which banned felons from owning guns, and also that the recent Supreme Court Bruin ruling doesn't change all that. Here's a quote from the government's lawyer during arguments. Quote, This court read the statement that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision was not casting doubt on longstanding felony prohibitions for firearms. And after about another year of legal back and forth, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Ms. Melinda. They said that while the Bruin decision did create a new standard for the country, it did not specifically overturn the prohibition of felons from owning guns.