(ReclaimingAmerica.net) – A federal judge has ruled that a convicted felon has the right to own firearms based on a 2022 US Supreme Court ruling – a somewhat ironic development since the same judge criticized last year’s decision, according to a report.
Mississippi-based US District Judge Carlton Reeves rejected a gun possession lawsuit against a convicted man based on the 2nd Amendment, Mississippi Today reports.
The news outlet notes his ruling seems to criticize the US Supreme Court for expanding gun rights during the past 20 years. Thus, he remarked he hoped the same expansion would be applied to rights to a speedy trial and vote, among others.
Reeves’ ruling came in a case in which a Mississippi man named Jessie Bullock was indicted in 2018 for possessing a gun in his home.
Bullock had served 15 years in prison over a manslaughter conviction for killing a person in a 1992 bar fight.
After Reeves was assigned the Bullock case in 2022, he “made national news” by slamming the Supreme Court’s Bruen ruling that year, overturning some of New York state’s limitations on concealed carry.
According to the nation’s highest court, any gun law must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” due to the Second Amendment.
“This court is not a trained historian. The Justices of the Supreme Court are not trained historians. And we are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791. Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication,” Reeves reacted last year.
In his decision to dismiss the case against Bullock last week, the judge wrote, “No historian has expressed an opinion regarding the history of felon disarmament,” and neither side in the suit had presented historical evidence.
“This court did not want to be guilty of itself cherry-picking the history,” Reeves declared.
He asked both parties if he should appoint a professional history expert, but they refused.
The judge pointed out that federal prosecutors cited 120 federal court decisions banning felons from owning guns.
“[Yet,] the government conceded that none of these courts has appointed an expert to help the sift through the historical record,” Reeves emphasized.
Judge Carlton Reeves has issued his decision in the felon-in-possession case. He rules that, under Bruen, permanently disarming people convicted of felonies violates the Second Amendment. The 77-page decision is absolutely fascinating. https://t.co/aVLee5se3s pic.twitter.com/quWEM5iwXQ
— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) June 28, 2023
