Lautenburg amendment upheld.

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Yeah, if you have a misdemeanor domestic you can never own a gun.



Wow.



You better not ever piss off your spouse, a false allegation could ruin your life.

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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,499526,00.html

U.S. Supreme Court Upholds Domestic Violence Gun Conviction

Tuesday, February 24, 2009


WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the conviction of a West Virginia man for violating a federal law barring people convicted in domestic violence cases from possessing firearms.

In a 7-2 vote, the court ruled that a federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., wrongly threw out the conviction of Randy Edward Hayes. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia dissented.

The federal government, gun control groups and women's rights advocates worried that a ruling for Hayes would have weakened the federal law enacted in 1996 that applied the 40-year-old ban on gun possession by a felon to people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Hayes' favor because the West Virginia state law on battery under which he was convicted did not contain specific wording about a domestic relationship between the offender and the victim.

Nine other appeals courts rejected that interpretation.

There was no dispute, however, that the victim in the 1994 crime was his then-wife.

Ten years later, police summoned to Hayes's home in response to a domestic violence 911 call found a Winchester rifle belonging to Hayes. They later discovered that he had possessed at least four other rifles following the 1994 case.

He was indicted on federal charges of possessing firearms following conviction of misdemeanor domestic violence, a reference to the 1994 case.

The case turned on whether the conviction for domestic violence that gives rise to the gun ban can be under a generic law against the use of force. Or, must the state law be aimed specifically at spousal abuse or domestic relationships.

Ginsburg said such specificity "would frustrate Congress' manifest purpose. Firearms and domestic strife are a potentially deadly combination nationwide."

In dissent, Roberts said the federal law is ambiguous and that the case should have been resolved in Hayes' favor. "Ten years in jail is too much to hinge on the will-o'-the-wisp of statutory meaning pursued by the majority," Roberts said.

The case is U.S. v. Hayes, 07-608.
Click to expand...
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Well this will only get worse as Obama replaces SC Justices over the next 4 years (Ginsburg is probably not long for this world, so she'll be replaced with a hard core Marxist first).
 
Short of a flat-out, across-the-board ban, anything goes.
 
I respectfully wholely disagree with the Supreme Court! Why is the 2A so frequently misunderstood??? Our forefathers felt it SOOO important they placed it second to speach and religion AND wrote "...shall not be infringed."

Most people don't know how EASY it is to get a temporary restraining order and an ultimate conviction of a MISDEMEANOR for "domestic violence." All that means is you had an argument where you said something mean and loudly and the cops came and cited or arrested someone. Or a jealous heartsick boyfriend sat outside his ex-girlfriends' house one night while she was out with another man. These are examples of the trivial things that cause men to lose the gun rights AND employment opportunities in heavily male dominated fields like law enforcement, military, and security.

The Lautenberg amendment is a serious infringement of the 2A, and last time I checked the 2A says, "...shall not be infringed."

And this seems to open the door to ANY battery, not just domestic violence (which is already very broadly defined to include live in partners and all family members, past or present).
 
ok, i'm a bit cooled down now and want to comment on this a bit. i was once a prosecutor in another life, and have some experience with this situation, not just the federal rule but with the home state of the plaintiff in this case. The SUPCT decision today doesn't just uphold the Lautenburg amendment, it also upholds a perverted enforcement of it. When the law went into effect, only a conviction of a crime of domestic violence would make the gun ban apply. Prosecutors would use their discretion and in some cases plead the case to a simple assault or battery, rather than the domestic offense. (And we're talking about misdemeanors here, not felonies.)

Why would you want to take the plea to the simple battery or assault instead of the domestic? Perhaps your case is flimsy and the victim has little credibility. Perhaps the defendant is a dad who caught his teenager with drugs and gave 'em a good slap in anger. Or perhaps it's two old brothers, both over 70 years in age, living together to share expenses, and a neighbor called the police because they were loudly, verbally arguing in their apartment.

Point is, not all domestic violence arrests involve husband/wife scenarios. And quite a few do not involve any physical contact whatsoever. And I can't speak for how things are today, but unofficial policy with the LEA's I worked with 10 years ago was that if the call was for domestic, SOMEBODY's gonna be arrested because you can't risk leaving the people there to kill themselves later.

Anyway, once the feds started seeing that prosecutors and judges has a way around the application of the gun ban, they issued a policy statement that basically said that it didn't matter what the arrest was for (domestic or simple), and it didn't matter what the eventual convition was for ... if it was an assault or battery, and the victim was a family member or live-in partner, then the gun ban applies.

That's what the SUPCT upheld today, by 7-2. :cuss:
 
At least they haven't added it to the list of charges that can't be expunged. Also in my opinion this case wasn't the best one to present to the SC I mean the reason the guy got charged with possession of the firearm by a DV offender was because the cops got called to his house on another domestic violence call. It doesn't really give a lot of credibility to people like myself who did something stupid years ago got sober and got their life together.
 
Another stupid decision out of the Court in favor of a just as stupid unconstitutional law. If someone is so dangerous that they cannot be allowed to keep and bear arms, that person belongs in prison where he can't get to arms until he can be trusted with them. What's to stop such an individual from strangling his mate? Beating them to death? Torturing them? Short of execution, lock him up and throw away the key.

When he can be trusted, call in a locksmith if he ain't dead.

In such a case as this, obviously the guy didn't turn to his gun, strangulation, stabbing, and since it's only a misdemeanor, it wasn't a merciless beating.

I'm throughly disappointed in Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy. It appears they have a double standard when it comes to the Constitution.

I'll have to read the decision to see if there is any hope left along this front. Nevertheless, it's a shame that the ultimate jury nullification wasn't applied.

Woody
 
He knew the law.
He broke the law.
He gets punished.
I know the law.
I don't break the law.
I own several guns and I get to keep them, period!
 
in this particular case, I'm glad Hayes can no longer own a gun. If I remember correctly, in the 1994 case, he did beat the ever-loving crap out of his then-wife. He should have been convicted of a felony in the first place.

However, I do not support the ruling. If it isn't a felony, then there is no justification for stripping away rights. They are pushing the line farther and farther back than where it should be (assuming it should be there to begin with)
 
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If someone punched their wife and they were at a grocery store, is that considered a domestic assault, or just an assault, since it's not in the home?


Or do the laws vary by state?


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dear frontgate: your missing the point on so many issue , but lets say they outlaw guns,now your braking the law,do you turn them in?
 
frontgate, you really, really don't seem to understand that whether or not you 'break the law' in this context is determined more by the person accusing you than by your actions. The hypotheticals I mentioned in my discussion of this above are not exaggerations ... they're real situations that I saw happen when I was prosecuting. I had a number of cases in which the 911 caller was a neighbor who wasn't even involved in the 'domestic altercation'. They just heard a loud argument going on in the next apartment and did what the public service announcement told them to do, i.e. call 911. When the police arrive, they arrest someone even though it was only a verbal argument because it's a domestic call and their employer's policy (city, county) is that someone has to be charged and taken out of the home, because there's too much liability in leaving the two arguers there alone to possibly kill each other later. Then, once someone is charged with a domestic violence offense, the arresting officer again cannot agree to a dismissal because this will bring the women's shelter organizations down on their department as being too soft on domestic violence. I've seen decent fathers get arrested because their spiteful little brat teenager who just wanted some revenge for not being allowed to go out and party called 911 and claimed their father threatened to kill them, etc.

You don't have to break the law to 'break the law.' And once you do get charged with a domestic violence offense, even just domestic assault (i.e. verbal only) your only hope now of keeping your gun rights is to go to trial and get an acquittal. Good luck.


This piece of crap that was the defendant in this case is the worst possible poster child for going to the SUPCT and arguing that the Lautenburg amendment is bad law. That's probably exactly why this case did make it to the SUPCT, if ya get my drift.
 
A good friend was denied a CCL for having a fine levied against him by one of his psycho exs. This crazy woman would sit in the room watching soap operas and suddenly blame him for doing things he wasnt doing (yes, I saw this many times). It would start as a simple calling of his name, then yelling "come here", it would then progress to him saying "what honey", she would scream at him accusing him of things that there was no way he could have done. Next she would either punch him multiple times, throw things at him, then a neighbor would call the cops. She cried and blamed him for it all, and would insist that even with witnesses opposed to her view point, that he was hitting her, not the other way around.
It helped her case that she flirted with the cops, looked like a supermodel, and was doing whoever could give her free drugs behind my friends back (he said she was a learning experience to never be revisited again).
Eventually the cops saw her for who she really was after she damaged 2 of his cars and needed a PFA put against her to help keep her away (didnt work, she still caused problems, and skated by flirting with another cop who responded), and was living with multiple drug dealers later who were arrested or killed.
He can buy firearms, but he cant carry his handgun, all because she accused him of something she was doing, and the cops believed her.
 
I've personally heard Clarence Thomas speak, and most times I see his dissensions against crap rulings....but am surprised by this, too. If you're a free man, like ConstitutionCowboy said, how can you be denied the right to protect yourself? Just goes to show how careful you have to be these days about who you associate with, and heaven forbid, you can't ever punish your children....
 
It was a very narrow portion of the law that was decided not exactly the ideal test case (for those opposed to Lautenberg) for the 'Lautenberg' Amendment. The court was deciding the case regarding the relationship portion of the statute. But, you get what you get...
 
I don't think that this upholds Lautenberg. The issue here seems to be the meaning of Lautenberg, not the constitutionality of Lautenberg.
 
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Is the above comment from Travis Bickle correct?



If someone punched their wife and they were at a grocery store, is that considered a domestic assault, or just an assault, since it's not in the home?


Or do the laws vary by state?


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There is a lot of uproar on this where folks really need to read the case before blowing off.

This case was not about the constitutionality or otherwise of the Lautenberg provisions.

This case was not a 2A case

The case was purely about the interpretation or mis-interpretation of the Lautenberg provisions when held against differing state provisions on what was or was not a "Misdemeanor Crime of Domestic Violence" MCDV.

In a nutshell, if an MCDV has occurred AND the case is then either pleaded down a similar but differently named offense, in this case West Virginia's simple battery statute, OR the offense of MCDV does not explicitly exist in the statutes of the state, does the offender get a pass?

The SC's ruling was that calling a violent wife beating toad a generically violent frog doesn't change the nature or offense of the toad.

As to the Constitutionality of otherwise of Lautenberg in relation to 2A, wasn't asked, not part of the case.

Only as and when 2A is incorporated AND the level of scrutiny is defined will laws like the Lautenberg provisions be capable of constitutional challenge or amendment.
 
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