Author Topic: Unlawful immigrants can have gun rights, appeals court rules  (Read 925 times)

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Unlawful immigrants can have gun rights, appeals court rules
« on: August 25, 2015, 10:14:19 am »
Unlawful immigrants can have gun rights, appeals court rules

By Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal Sentinel
Aug. 24, 2015 4:43 p.m.

In the case of a Milwaukee man deported over a single .22 caliber cartridge, a federal appeals court ruled last week that even unlawful immigrants can be part of the "the public" that enjoys a Second Amendment right to keep a gun for self defense.

The U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeas said even undocumented immigrants can be part of "the people" protected by the Bill of Rights, though it upheld the man's conviction on a specific law that prohibits most such persons from having guns.

"It is now clear that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is no second-class entitlement, (and) we see no principled way to carve out the Second Amendment and say that the unauthorized (or maybe all noncitizens) are excluded," Judge Diane Wood wrote for a panel that included judges Richard Easterbrook and Joel Flaum.

"No language in the Amendment supports such a conclusion, nor, as we have said, does a broader consideration of the Bill of Rights."

Because four other federal circuit courts have come to the opposite conclusion, legal commentators were quick to suggest the issue of whether undocumented immigrants have Second Amendment rights could now be headed for the U.S. Supreme Court.

While rejecting the idea that undocumented immigrants could never have any rights under the Second Amendment, Wood noted that even for citizens, those rights are not unlimited. She found that a federal law tailored to keep guns out of the hands of undocumented immigrants — like gun restrictions imposed on felons and those convicted of domestic violence — was constitutional, and upheld the conviction on those grounds.

According to the opinion:
Mariano Meza-Rodriguez's parents brought him to the U.S. from Mexico when he was 4. He grew up in Milwaukee and attended Milwaukee Public Schools, but he never became a citizen or obtained papers allowing him to remain in the U.S. legally.

A federal law makes it illegal for someone in that status, what the court called an "unauthorized immigrant," to possess firearms or ammunition. The prohibition also covers people in the U.S. on non-immigrant visas.

The 7th Circuit found such restrictions advanced the government's interest in controlling crime, because people without documentation are harder to find and could more easily evade authorities.

Meza-Rodriguez was arrested in 2012 following a bar fight . Though some witnesses had said Meza-Rodriguez may have had a gun earlier in the night, all police found was the single .22 round. He was indicted on the federal charge.

Meza-Rodriguez moved for dismissal on the grounds the charge interfered with his Second Amendment right to bear arms for self defense. Prosecutors said that he had no such rights as an undocumented immigrant, and U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa agreed.

Meza-Rodriguez pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served, but also deported to Mexico. Now a felon, he cannot ever be legally admitted to the U.S.
Because a victory on appeal would give Meza-Rodriguez at least a chance of readmission to the U.S., the court said, his appeal was not rendered moot by his deportation.

The opinion cites other cases that attached Fourth Amendment and 14th Amendment rights to unauthorized immigrants when they have substantial connections to the U.S., and found Meza-Rodriguez's ties to be sufficient.

The government argued that Meza-Rodriguez's "unsavory traits, including his multiple brushes with the law, failure to file tax returns, and lack of a steady job, demonstrate that he has not sufficiently accepted the obligations of living in American society."

The 7th Circuit disagreed, but did find that Second Amendment rights are not unlimited, and upheld the restriction on unauthorized immigrants' possession of weapons and ammunition on narrower grounds, equating it to gun possession bans imposed on the mentally ill, felons and those convicted of domestic violence.

In a concurring opinion, Judge Flaum joined the result but said he would not go as far saying undocumented immigrants might have Second Amendment protections, since the court didn't need to address that question to decide Meza-Rodriguez's case.

http://www.jsonline.com/news/crime/u...322737461.html