NOTE: The following should NOT be construed as legal advice. Challenge laws in court at your own risk,
The insanity in the United States continued in March, as a Federal judge ruled that illegal aliens in the United States couldn’t be denied the right to possess and exercise their rights enumerated under the 2nd Amendment. This comes just prior to a judge in New York City openly violating the law as established under the United States Code (USC), Title 18, Section 242.
But let’s return to that illegal alien case.
By definition, anyone who enters the United States illegally has committed a crime. What this means, regardless of what side of the immigration debate the reader may fall on, is that any person entering the country illegally cannot – or should not – be able to legally possess or acquire a firearm for any reason or purpose, because of their status as a criminal.
But not according to Judge Sharon Coleman, of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. Ruling on March 8th, Judge Coleman reversed an earlier determination she had made in the case of U.S. v. Carbajal-Flores. Judge Coleman had earlier, in 2022, rejected Mr. Carbajal-Flores’ claim that 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5)(A) unfairly criminalized his act of possessing a firearm as an illegal alien.
Citing the Supreme Court of the United States’ (SCOTUS) 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, Judge Coleman ruled that denying an illegal alien the right to possess a firearm based solely on their status as an illegal alien was an unconstitutional violation of their rights under Section 1 of the 14th Amendment.
To say that this is an extraordinary ruling should be a given. In fact, when this author first heard of this case, I was mortally certain that it was a terrible ruling, as it opened the door to all manner of criminal abuses. At first brush, that would seem to be incontrovertibly true.
However, there is a much further-reaching set of implications implicit in this ruling.
In order to be legally protected in possessing a firearm, a person must have the ability to legally acquire a firearm, in the first place. The problem? An illegal alien, by definition, cannot produce the most basic legal documents needed to legally acquire a firearm in almost any state in the Union:
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A valid and legal form of identification, such as a “green card”, a diver’s license listing an address in the state of purchase, or another type of identification issued by the state of residence and purchase
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A legally filled-out Form 4473 (note question 21(l))
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The ability to successfully pass a background check via the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)
It is irrelevant if an illegal alien acquires a firearm through an unregistered private transaction; the above laws are applied to every person in the United States.
Until now.
What the judge’s ruling means, despite her repeated attempts in her revised ruling to apply her decision only to Mr. Carbajal-Flores is that all of the above documents are no longer required for any legal sale from a Federal Firearms License (FFL). While this may sound extreme, it most certainly is not – in order to exercise a right of any kind, a person must be able to have unfettered access the tools necessary to exercise the right in question, even if they have to pay a private entity to obtain those tools.
If the judge’s ruling applies to illegal aliens, it also applies to all legal citizens. There is no “wiggle room” on this, as all are deemed to be equal in the eyes of the law.
Various bad actors within both the United States and its “Several States” governments have, since 1934, engaged in the promulgation and enforcement of illegal restrictions on firearms sales, possession and transmission, usually to limit the access to weapons for racial or political groups that those entities do not like.
The difference is vital to understand: No person in the United States has a “right” to operate any kind of motor vehicle on public roads, anywhere in the United States, unless they possess a valid driver’s license. However, no one needs a license to exercise their rights under the 1st Amendment – this is why you are allowed to operate a website, or print and hand out flyers on a street corner (despite continual attempts at all levels to attempt to do so).
This especially applies to firearm ownership. The 2nd Amendment is explicit:
“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.”
In the 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the SCOTUS expanded the definition of the 2nd Amendment to include the right to own, keep, and possess weapons for self-defense, in addition to the originally understood purpose, which was to ensure the ability of the People to be adequately equipped to help defend the nation if called upon to do so in the form of an armed militia. While this use was clarified in subsequent rulings, various governmental parties within the nation have relentlessly sought to limit, if not outright criminalize, the ownership of firearms in general.
To the point of this particular case, while Judge Coleman’s ruling may seem outrageous, my opinion on it has changed since reading through her ruling. I am now foursquare in favor of the judge’s ruling, as it has – at a single stroke – the unlawful control mechanisms that have illegally destroyed lives and unjustly incarcerate American citizens for nearly one hundred years.
All that is wanting, is a lawsuit against an FFL holder for refusing to sell to someone who refuses to present identification at point of sale – based on Judge Coleman’s ruling, a seller cannot refuse a sale for lack of identification.
I don’t make the rules – I just read them.
