• Second Amendment appellate strategy avoiding Bad Facts Make Bad Law

    From Adam H. Kerman@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jun 10 02:29:15 2026
    In America, the recognized constitutional rights by Supreme Court
    decision before being taken into police custody, at arrest, and during
    trial are generally based on facts and circumstances in which the
    defendant is not only not sympathetic but likely committed the crime.

    Our First Amendment rights to speech exist because someone wanted to
    resurrect the KKK and speech and assembly because someone else wanted to
    march Neo Nazis through a village filled with Holocaust survivors.
    Freedom of the press? That had to overcome prior restraint based on
    claimed national security implications.

    Our law protects the civil rights based on bad facts to keep those who truly are innocent from being railroaded.

    Here is a video made by a guy who wants federal courts to recognize more expansive Second Amendment rights but hates that the Solicitor General
    keeps trying to appeal cases on behalf of bad actors. He thinks the
    current Supreme Court is unsympathetic to those convicted of felonies
    and I think he's looking for more widespread public acceptance.

    Reminder about the current law: Bruen (2022) is the decision that in my
    opinion is complete judicial activism by Clarence Thomas because the
    appellants should have won on Due Process violations. Instead, Thomas
    forced historical analysis as the main consideration for all 2A cases
    going forward. There are serious problems with that as there is no such
    thing as complete common law and plenty of common law decisions were
    written based on the obvious prejudice the judge brought to the
    proceedings. Furthermore, in the days before LexusNexus and WESTLAW,
    legal research was very cumbersome and lack of indexing and key words
    made it terribly difficult. Precedent wasn't always followed.

    In the time of the Founding, gun rights might have been taken away
    temporarily from debtors, but once fines were paid and the felon had
    completed his sentence, he could be armed. Thieves, though, had
    different considerations in permancnes of loss of rights.

    I hate the way this guy talks. He talks so fast, I misinterpreted his
    argument the first time.

    The video maker would prefer that the Solicitor General stop challenging
    the federal prohibited persons laundry list of those without gun rights.
    He thinks the current Court is so unsympathetic to those whose felony convictions actually stand up and the public doesn't want at least some
    of these people to be armed.

    Cockerham was the case in which a man was a prohibited person for having
    a felony conviction for failure to pay child support. He never went to
    prison, though, but because he could have been sentenced to two years,
    he was a prohibited person. He even made up the arrears. Cockerham won
    his appeal at Fifth Circuit, which made a narrow ruling that the arrears
    was analogous to being a debtor, so since he made up the arrears, in the historical analysis, he would have had his rights restored.

    To defend the federal statute despite political misgivings, the
    Solicitor General appealled. Cert was denied.

    So we are left with the two law-and-order cases. Rahimi (2024) in which
    someone actually dangerous could permanently lose the right to be armed.
    This asshole was about as unsympathetic as one could be. He was under a
    civil order of protection barring possession of firearms. There had been multiple shootings and he'd even shot at witnesses. Temporary disarming
    is constitutional given the finding of a credible threat to another's
    safety.

    There isn't yet a decision in Hemani, in which illegal drug users are temporarily prohibited persons.

    The video maker wants Hemani to expand 2A rights. I don't get how that
    follows his dislike of legal precedent being set on behalf of impure
    persons. Well, you take the appeal you can get.

    In any event, he's guessing that Hemani will be a very narrow ruling interpreting the statutes in question and not expanding 2A rights.

    Next term, he's claiming that all of the 2A cases will involved
    sympathetic law-abiding gun users. The Roberts court will uphold the
    rights of the little guy? Now, if we were talking about Hobby Lobby's
    gun rights, it would be an expansive ruling.

    We have an expansive First Amendment based on Klingon opera, not
    beautiful love sonnets.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DisvpHDyedM

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  • From Adam H. Kerman@3:633/10 to All on Wed Jun 10 02:36:53 2026
    Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

    Here is a video made by a guy who wants federal courts to recognize more

    I told you this guy spoke so quickly I misunderstood, but I failed to
    correct this.

    who does not want

    expansive Second Amendment rights

    based on finding federal laws prohibiting possession by
    prhibited persons unconstitutional

    but hates that the Solicitor General keeps trying to appeal cases
    on behalf of bad actors.

    on behalf of upholding the constitutionality of such statutes
    despite holding a contrary political belief

    He thinks the
    current Supreme Court is unsympathetic to those convicted of felonies
    and I think he's looking for more widespread public acceptance.

    Actually, he thinks that the Court acts on behalf of criminals and fails
    to take cases on behalf of otherwise sympathetic law-abiding citizens.
    He points out that both Heller and McDonald were sympathetic.

    Sorry about my confusion and not correcting this before injecting.

    . . .

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  • From Adam H. Kerman@3:633/10 to All on Thu Jun 18 22:03:24 2026
    Subject: United States v. Hemani gun rights with drug use decided (was: Second Amendment appellate strategy avoiding Bad Facts Make Bad Law)

    Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

    . . .

    There isn't yet a decision in Hemani, in which illegal drug users are >temporarily prohibited persons.

    The video maker wants Hemani to expand 2A rights. I don't get how that >follows his dislike of legal precedent being set on behalf of impure
    persons. Well, you take the appeal you can get.

    In any event, he's guessing that Hemani will be a very narrow ruling >interpreting the statutes in question and not expanding 2A rights.

    Hemani is one bizarre case to get appealed as there is no real
    controversy. Under federal law, drug users are prohibited persons with
    respect to gun use, and the sentence can be up to 15 years. The
    government just has to show any amount of use. FBI arrested the
    defendant after a search of his home in which the gun was found,
    together with illegal drugs. Defendant stated that he used marijuana
    every other day.

    At trial, defendant already had the charge thrown out based on a 5th
    Circuit precedent that a defendant may indeed be a drug user but there
    was no evidence of gun possession whilst under the influence of drugss.

    There was an appeal to the 5th Circuit in which the government agreed
    that the charge should be thrown out and the opinion upheld the trial
    court ruling.

    It then got appealled to to the Supreme Court. This time, the government
    argued for the constitutionality of the statute based on historical laws
    in place at the time of the founding. The government pointed out laws
    against habitual drunks, how they would be jailed or made to post bond
    to comply with conditions.

    In a 9-0 decision, Gorsuch said the historical analysis wasn't analogous
    as a habitual drunk could never manage his own affairs and wasn't just
    someone who got into trouble or harmed others whilst drunk.

    He further ruled that habitual drunkard laws were generally not about protecting the public from crimes that might be committed by drunkards
    and the law couldn't be justified on that basis.

    Gorsuch made the opinion very narrow to this specific instance in which
    the government showed only drug use and nothing else related to use or possession while under the influence or when the government had actual
    evidence that a drug user under he influece was actually dangerous.

    Did the Solicitor General throw the case? I still don't understand how
    it got appealed at circuit and then to the Supreme Court since the
    government, at first, wasn't trying to overturn the 5th Circuit opinion.

    Court sides with challenger to law banning drug users from possessing
    guns
    By Amy Howe
    SCOTuSblog
    Jun 18, 2026 https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-sides-with-challenger-to-law-banning-drug-users-from-possessing-guns/

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