Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court Monday declined to take a challenge to a Wisconsin law banning state residents who have been convicted of felonies – including non-violent crimes – from owning handguns for the rest of their lives.
Leevan Roundtree challenged his conviction after police found a revolver and bullets in his home and charged him in 2015 with possessing a firearm despite a prior felony conviction. Twelve years earlier Roundtree pleaded guilty to failure to pay child support for more than four months, a felony in Wisconsin.
The question of whether states can ban non-violent felons from owning guns has repeatedly come up at the Supreme Court but remains unanswered. The justices declined to take up three similar challenges earlier this year, allowing to stand lower court rulings that upheld similar state laws. One of those cases involved a man who had pleaded guilty to selling counterfeit cassette tapes in the 1980s.
Roundtree appealed to the Supreme Court after Wisconsin's high court ruled against him earlier this year, noting that the state law "does not draw any distinctions among felonies." The state court considered Wisconsin's interest in preventing gun violence and asserted that the law was substantially related to that interest.
Gun rights groups want federal courts to apply a more strict standard when deciding when laws can prohibit gun ownership. Under that more restrictive approach, states would have to demonstrate a compelling interest and also show that the law was written as narrowly as possible to achieve that government interest.
The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments on Nov. 3 in a separate dispute over New York State's requirements for receiving a permit to carry a concealed handgun in public.
The nation's highest court overruled handgun bans in Washington and Chicago in 2008 and 2010 in two blockbuster cases that affirmed the rights of Americans to possess guns in their homes but left unanswered questions about carrying in public. In the 2008 case, the majority asserted that its ruling was not intended to cast doubt on state bans prohibiting felons from owning firearms.
https://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-declines-former-felons-181221331.html