Supreme Court gets <u>Hayes</u> wrong, only felonies should cause loss of civil rights Commentary
Supreme Court gets Hayes wrong, only felonies should cause loss of civil rights
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Rep. Jennifer Coffey [Director, National Coordinator, Second Amendment Sisters, Inc.] and Evan F. Nappen [Attorney at Law]: "It's said that God created man and woman, but it took Sam Colt to make them equal. Domestic violence is deplorable. Abusing any person, whether man or woman, is wrong. The problem is when the issue of domestic violence is used to promote an anti-gun agenda to create a new lower threshold for disenfranchisement of individual gun rights. Traditionally, misdemeanor convictions have never been disqualifiers of civil rights. Only felony convictions caused a loss of civil rights, such as the right to vote, the right to hold public office, or the right to serve on a jury.

If domestic violence offenses are serious enough to take away one's Constitutional Right to Keep and Bear Arms, then these offenses are serious enough to be felonies. The Hayes Court rationalizes the law by claiming Congress closed a "loophole" by its enactment. In reality, the bar for loss of civil rights was simply lowered. The Hayes Court stated as followed:

"Because many states classify domestic violence crimes as misdemeanors rather than felonies, many domestic violence offenders could not be prohibited from handgun possession under the original version of the Gun Control Act. In an effort to close this loophole, Congress passed the Lautenberg Amendment, prohibiting offenders who had been convicted of Misdemeanor Crimes of Domestic Violence from possessing handguns."

This hardly is closing a loophole, but rather creating a noose to hang unsuspecting folks who plead guilty to misdemeanor offenses never knowing they would permanently forfeit their gun rights. The answer is to require the States to make domestic violence offenses felony level if the crimes are that serious. If the offenses are not that serious, then they are rightly misdemeanors and should not be disqualifiers.

Both men and women can fall into the domestic violence loss of gun rights trap. The Second Amendment Sisters do not want to see gun rights eroded in the name of political correctness. If the offense is serious, make it a felony and prosecute to the fullest. If it is not that serious, then do not use it as an excuse for back door gun control."

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