A Supreme Court ruling slammed by President Joe Biden now might offer Hunter Biden an avenue by which to appeal his three-felony firearm charge.
A 6-3 ruling last year in New York Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen said that requiring people to show a particular need for carrying a gun in order to obtain a license to carry one in public violated the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
President Biden himself said the Supreme Court’s decision “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution and should deeply trouble us all.”
Hunter Biden last month pleaded not guilty to a three-count indictment over alleged illegal possession of a firearm. The third count is for possessing a gun “while knowing he was an unlawful” drug user.
The first son’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, vowed to use the New York Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen’s ruling to fight the charge.
“I want to make sure that everybody understands that after five years of an investigation, that the prosecutors knew all the facts, and the only change that has occurred between when they investigated and today is that the law changed,” Lowell said in September.
“But the law didn’t change in favor of a prosecution. The law changed against it because a couple of federal courts have found this gun charge to be unconstitutional.”
The decision has resulted in varying decisions among federal courts nationwide as judges have weighed historical evidence to determine whether a modern gun control law conforms with similar regulations as far back as the nation’s founding, the Washington Examiner reported.
Statute 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(3) concerns “Evidence of Prior Conviction of Defendant Charged with Possession of a Firearm by a Convicted Felon.”
A federal judge in Oklahoma has ruled that a federal law prohibiting people who use marijuana from owning firearms is unconstitutional.
In August, in U.S. v. Daniels, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled that the same subsection of the law is unconstitutional in a case involving a defendant who used marijuana while possessing a gun.
Legal expert Jonathan Turley told the Examiner that Hunter Biden could benefit from existing legal challenges that are further down the line for the Supreme Court’s possible examination.
“A challenge to Section 922 would be predictable in most criminal cases,” Turley, a George Washington University law professor, told the Examiner. “This, however, would result in a curious challenge by Hunter of a law that has long been defended by his father. It could come to that, though cases like Daniels may do the heavy lifting in challenging the law.”
Some experts say Hunter Biden might benefit from a favorable high court ruling in cases such as Daniels.
“The Daniels case has been decided by the 5th Circuit, so it’s already on its way up to the Supreme Court. More, the federal government lost to that case. And so anytime it’s the federal government, petitioning the Supreme Court for a writ of cert for review of their case, the likelihood that the [review] is granted goes way up,” Firearms Policy Coalition attorney Cody Wisniewski told the Examiner.
via newsmax
