Felons and Guns
Today the North Carolina Supreme Court became the first court in the nation (if you believe the dissent, anyway, and I have no reason to doubt her) to rule that as applied to nonviolent felons, our state ban on gun possession by convicted felons is unconstitutional. You might wonder how they square that decision with Heller, which held only by a razor-thin margin that the right to bear arms protects anything at all, and where even the Scalia-led majority noted that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” So how did our Supreme Court manage to find otherwise? Simple. The Heller decision interpreted the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which provides that:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
while today’s decision focused on on Article I, Section 30 of the North Carolina Constitution, which provides in relevant part that:
A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed;
The difference is subtle, but important. Our right to bear arms has two less commas and one more semicolon than yours. Certainly no less of a distinction than can be found between the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the hidden Gay Marriage Clauses that keep turning up in an ever-growing number of state ones. Take that, non-Tarheels and Confederate Yankees.
Uncle has more.
August 29th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
If I point out that your right to bear arms actually has two fewer commas, can we add the Language Police tag?
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August 29th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
We could, if comments had tags of their own. I might should add it for the entire thread, though. And feel free to hold me in contempt of cop for saying “might should” while under arrest for another alleged language violation.
August 30th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
I suspect that the problem of felony inflation is what the NC court was grappling with, something that was not an issue before the SC in Heller.
August 30th, 2009 at 11:28 pm
It wasn’t an issue here, either, or at least the court didn’t make an issue of it in their opinion. I’m not sure I buy the theory, anyway. At the time the country was founded, sodomy was a felony in every state. Today it’s not a crime at all; in fact, per Lawrence it’s a protected right.
September 16th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Still a federal problem though or not?
September 16th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
One would think. Oddly enough, the issue of federal law was not brought up in the decision at all.