National overview
Why is a lifelong gun ban imposed on tax fraud?
That the punishment should match the crime is a common axiom. If you are lying on a tax return, you can expect to face certain consequences, such as fines and the refund of tax returns, probably with interest, and maybe even housekeeping, or (in the extreme case) imprisonment. But you would not expect a lifelong restriction on your fundamental rights – such as the freedom to speak, to own property or to enjoy your privacy. These penalties would be arbitrary and unfair, given the nature of the crime. You would also not expect to permanently lose your right to possess a firearm as punishment for a false statement to the IRS. But that is exactly what can happen and what has happened as a result of an unforgivable and unconstitutional federal law – passed as part of the Gun Control Act of 1968 – that automatically bans all criminals, even those only convicted of violent crimes, to ever possess firearms for self-defense. The loss of the natural, constitutionally protected right to possess a firearm is an unfair and arbitrary consequence for a non-violent crime of this nature. This is similar to losing your right to speak or the right to unreasonably seek and seize. And yet, unlike the other – hypothetical – unfair punishments, the federal government imposes tens of thousands – if not hundreds of thousands – of nonviolent offenders on this lifelong ban on the possession of firearms. Non-violent criminals are not the only people who are subject to this ‘life sentence’. The conviction automatically leads to a conviction for any crime punishable by more than one year in prison. And this lifelong ban applies regardless of whether imprisonment has actually been served. Below this comprehensive standard, even crimes lead to lifelong loss of gun rights. Worse, it all depends – randomly – on where an offense was committed. There are eight states in which a single DUI conviction causes this permanent ban on gun ownership. In Oklahoma, adultery (which in some jurisdictions is not even a crime and only an offense in others) will result in this lifelong ban. In Pennsylvania, a conviction for reading someone’s e-mail without permission would lead to a lifetime without gun rights. So too the federal offense of uttering ‘any obscene, obscene or blasphemous language by means of radio communication’. Mountain Center Legal Foundation’s Center for Keep and Bear Arms recently filed three amicus curiae (or friend of the court) orders with the U.S. Supreme Court addressing this issue. One on behalf of Ken Flick, who lost his gun license for life due to a 1987 conviction for importing and selling bootleg music cassettes. Another on behalf of Lisa Folajtar, who was convicted of making false statements about her tax returns in 2011 and has since been barred from owning a gun. And the latter, who joined the Cato Institute on behalf of Raymond Holloway, who pleaded guilty to a misconduct DUI in 2005, in which no one was injured, and has since been denied his natural right to self-defense. The life-long gun ban for nonviolent offenders violates the natural rights protected by the US Constitution. This is in violation of the Second Amendment. And this is contrary to the precedent of the Supreme Court. Some lower courts have upheld this permanent ban through the new and erroneous notion that the right to possess firearms requires ‘virtue’ and can be stripped by the government of ‘serious’ offenders. Other fundamental rights, such as those protected by the first and fourth amendments, are not treated as such. The Supreme Court has already paved the way for ending this unfair lifelong ban; it must simply apply its own test. The court’s ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller makes it clear that courts must look at the text, history and tradition of the Second Amendment when determining whether a modern arms regulation is constitutional. The text of the amendment speaks of an individual right to arms possession: a right based on human nature, not a government provision of ‘virtue’. And based on the same standard of natural law, our Anglo-American tradition restricts the exercise of this right only by those who are demonstrably dangerous. In a proper, historically informed sense, ‘danger’ is a category with a clear measure with a clear rationale, as opposed to the abstract and improper idea that any crime that a court or legislature considers ‘serious’, the end of the arms law must spell. The difference in standards and reasoning is not small. There is a basic clash of visions regarding the nature of our rights. Gun rights are not a privilege that the government grants to the “virtuous” to deny on what basis the government considers “serious”. This misunderstanding of gun rights shows a deep and dangerous misunderstanding of rights in general and where they come from. Lifelong gun ban for non-violent should not be enforced on the basis of such errors. Non-violent individuals cannot be prevented from exercising their natural, fundamental right to possess lifelong weapons on the basis of sound reasoning and the court in Heller.