[Volokh] Ninth Circuit Upholds Federal Ban on Gun Ownership by Illegal Aliens

Anyone who actually paid attention to the 9th Circuit and not just the high profile cases that people like to use out of context to try and make a point.

 

At least as laid out in the blog, the reasoning doesn't sound very compelling. Sounds more like picking on a class that can't represent itself. Should tax cheats or fraudsters who are living in a constant state of illegality also have a ban?

 

2nd Amendment advocates & strict constitutionalists can't be happy - they reaffirmed the right of the government to regulate and restrict guns for various reasons.

 

Not everyone agrees that non-citizens should even be entitled to constitutional protections in the first place. IMO that's a perversion of the law.

 

Let's look at the Constitution, even though I am not sure many people care about it anymore. It says, "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 People refers to a specific group because of the article THE. Which group do you think it refers to? Americans. It doesn't say All People or simply People. Foriegn invaders are not included in "The People" of the United States. They have no such protections under law.

HOWEVER, I could argue that the Bill of Rights was based on philosophy that actually assumed these are God Given Rights, and being that God doesn't have one country under his dominion, then those rights could in the spirit of the law be extended to illegal aliens. Of course this was not written down in a way that would help them in court. This is just getting into John Locke's work during the enlightenment.

If I had to pick though, I would side with the strict Constitutional interpretation, and say that no, it is very clear that "The People" does not include other Peoples.

 

This is an interesting collision of stupid conservative sloganeering. Often the claim is that gun laws don't work because criminals don't follow the law. Illegals in their eyes are "criminals" so the distinction of legality is meaningless to a conservative argument for gun control in this case. Additionally, if the framers intended the people to mean only citizens then they obviously should have referenced it that way as they did with voting. When we say the people of the United States in a globalized framework we understand that to be all of the people in the United States and not merely Americans particularly because of the varied racial and ethnic makeup of the populace.

It's strict constitutionalism until you have to wiggle your way back and forth to apply laws that are inadequately written in a modern context.