Newsweek: Undocumented Immigrants Have Right to Own Guns, Judge Rules.
A judge this month dropped gun charges against an illegal migrant in Illinois, sparking further debate about the rights associated with the Second Amendment.
U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Coleman of the Northern District of Illinois referenced lower court rulings in dismissing firearm possession charges against Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, who was illegally or unlawfully in the United States when he possessed a handgun in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago on June 1, 2020.
"The Court finds that Carbajal-Flores' criminal record, containing no improper use of a weapon, as well as the non-violent circumstances of his arrest do not support a finding that he poses a risk to public safety such that he cannot be trusted to use a weapon responsibly and should be deprived of his Second Amendment right to bear arms in self-defense," Coleman, who was appointed under President Barack Obama, wrote in her eight-page ruling filed March 8.
Carbajal-Flores was charged under Title 18 of U.S. Criminal Code, which legally disallows undocumented individuals to possess firearms and ammunition "or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce."
Meanwhile, democrats actively seek to pass legislation that prohibits some U.S. Military Veterans from owning guns.
⏬ March 19, 2024 ⏬
NRA-ILA: Anti-gun Democrats Seek to Undermine Law Passed to Protect Veterans’ Rights.
[...] a partisan coalition of anti-gun Congressional Democrats – all but two of whom actually voted for the spending package – is now leaning on the VA to ignore or undermine the rider. In doing so, they are using the usual anti-gun tactics of fearmongering, misinformation, and gaslighting.
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The attempt came in a March 13 letter spearheaded by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA), chairman of the so-called House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, to the Secretary of the VA, Denis McDonough, and was signed by 138 Democrat members of Congress.
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The claims in the letter, unsurprisingly, do not hold up to scrutiny and in some cases actually lend support to the rider itself.
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It's true that statutory law allows the VA to make a “competency” determination for the process of administering its own system of benefits. But that determination has no legal effect outside of that context. As the VA states on its own website, “The determination that you are unable to manage your VA benefits does not affect your non-VA finances, or your right to vote or contract.” This makes sense, as it is a purely administrative procedure that contains no adversarial process unless the beneficiary decides to challenge the action after the fact.
Even then, these appeals are processed in the first instance by the VA itself. And it makes perfect sense for some beneficiaries to have a fiduciary, while also legally possessing firearms. The insinuation that standards for assigning a fiduciary take into an account a veteran’s propensity for posing a physical danger to self or other is patently false.
⏬ March 4, 2024 ⏬
U.S. Senate Committee on Veteran's Affairs: After Tester Push, Provision to Protect Veterans’ Second Amendment Rights from Federal Overreach is Included in Must-Pass Government Funding Bill.
A critical bipartisan amendment U.S. Senator Jon Tester championed to protect veterans’ access to legal firearms has been included in the government funding legislation, following his call to Senate leadership to include the provision.
“It’s flat wrong that a DC bureaucrat could take away a veteran’s legal right to firearms simply because they need assistance managing their finances,” Tester said. “We need to ensure the government does not infringe on veterans’ Second Amendment rights, and I’m glad we were able to fix this unfair policy in the government funding legislation. This is a win for Second Amendment rights and for veterans who have made it clear that VA’s current practice is pushing some folks away from accessing the mental health care they need out of fear their firearms will be seized.”
Tester's bill passed, yet democrats immediately work at trying to undo it.
⏬ March 13, 2024 ⏬
Roll Call: House Democrats urge VA to find gun rider workaround.
“We are calling on the Department of Veterans Affairs to use their power to bypass this rollback and they must do so before a single life is lost because of this legislation,” Rep. Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida said in a statement. He was one of three Democrats, including Sen. Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut and House Veterans’ Affairs ranking member Mark Takano of California, to vote against the spending law.
The House members urged the VA to establish processes that would automatically seek a judicial order for veterans deemed mentally incompetent. The department should stretch appropriations from previous years out for as long as possible, which would allow the VA to continue reporting names to the FBI background check system while putting those processes in place, the lawmakers said.
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The department should also make full use of state red flag laws to report concerning behavior from veterans and educate state VA facilities about the tools available to them, the letter said.
