Posted on 01/28/2012 6:40:17 AM PST by marktwain
The U.S. Constitution and the Nevada Constitution both give citizens the right to bear arms.
But the Nevada Supreme Court said Thursday that right doesn't extend to convicted felons. And that prohibition in Nevada applies to antique and muzzle-loading replica firearms.
Michael Pohlabel, an ex-felon, was arrested in Elko County with a black-powder rifle in the back seat of his car. The weapon is a type that must be loaded by hand each time a shot is fired, takes at least 45 seconds to load and is hard to conceal.
The court noted that federal law excludes antique and muzzle-loading replica firearms, including black-powder rifles, from the list of weapons prohibited to ex-felons.
But the court, in a unanimous decision written by Justice Kristina Pickering, said Nevada law prohibits a felon from possessing any firearm, whether it is "loaded or unloaded, operable or inoperable." Pickering wrote, "While the federal law currently permits felons to possess black powder rifles, that does not mandate that Nevada follow suit."
The decision upholds the conviction of Pohlabel, who pleaded guilty to being an ex-felon in possession of a firearm but reserved the right to appeal to the Supreme Court.
Pohlabel maintained the possession of the black-powder rifle did not make him a threat. He had been convicted seven years earlier of possession of a controlled substance.
He argued that the prohibition of holding firearms should not apply to a nonviolent felon.
But Pickering said a felon loses many civil rights, including the right to serve on jury, hold a public office, be employed in sensitive positions such as a peace officer or licensed school teacher or possess firearms.
Pohlabel has been free pending the Supreme Court's ruling. He was sentenced to 12 to 34 months on his guilty plea.
Never saw the guns again.
Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent
"The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance."
If you are too dangerous to own a gun, you are too dangerous to be out of jail.
You can always get a gun if you’re a bad guy.
Same thing if you’re nuts. You can buy or steal a gun if you want one.
You’re either free or you’re not.
I say let them all carry, the more that do the merrier. Anyone even remotely sane would hesitate to pull out and start blasting if they knew 90%+ of the people around them are probably carrying too.
That isn't logical, making focused restrictions once released, makes sense. A child molester probably shouldn't be able to go right back to his day care business for instance.
You prove the point. A child sex offender is too dangerous to be released from jail, ever. The recidivism rate is extremely high for those folks.
The point stands, unblemished by your flawed argument. Felons, once serving their time -- provided they are safe enough to release at all -- should have all their rights returned.
The point it proves is that risking releasing a person from prison does not mean that we think he is fully normal.
We know that most convicted felons are anything but normal, but we have to deal with realities and try to manage them, we generally don’t want sociopath CPAs to go back into finance, or gang bangers to be arming themselves because we release them, we try to impose appropriate restrictions on associations and occupations related to the criminals sociopathy.
To release MS13 hitmen and gang enforcers, and then allow them to legally carry seems rather bizarre.
Right, we don't want felons to go back into the same area in which they were convicted of a crime. If a gun wasn't a part of their conviction I don't see why they should be banned from owning one
Okay, ignoring for a moment that we are all becoming more likely to be convicted of felonies every moment, what with an increasingly absurd criminal code -- let us roll with your premise.
The gun prohibition is not a targeted one, as you argue for. It is too broad, covering all felons -- even the owner of a gas station who failed to put up a sign saying that he can take recycled oil (yes, I read about a man who was convicted for that).
Frankly getting guns back to felons is not one of my pressing concerns right now, but if you want to at least back off a guns for all ex-felons policy, then you might do better with your issue.
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