Felons come in two flavors: violent and non-violent. While some figure anyone not in prison should have their gun rights restored, and if they break the law so badly they can't be trusted with them, they shouldn't get out of prison—a position I tend to favor—restoring rights for non-violent felons is an easier sell to most of the public.
And a case in North Carolina hopes to do that at the state level, but the governor isn't a fan.
In fact, he's planning on filing a friend of the court brief asking them to uphold the state's ban.
Gov. Josh Stein is asking the North Carolina Supreme Court to uphold a state law banning gun possession by felons. Stein’s lawyers filed a court document Monday seeking to file a friend-of-the-court brief in the case State v. Ducker.
The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, North Carolina Sheriffs’ Association, North Carolina Association of Chiefs of Police, and North Carolina Police Executives Association filed a similar request last week.
On the other side of the case, the gun-rights group Grass Roots North Carolina, the ACLU of North Carolina, and the libertarian Cato Institute all have filed briefs supporting criminal defendant Eric James Ducker’s challenge of the felony firearm possession law.
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“Here, Ducker asks this Court to vacate not only his own conviction under the Felony Firearms Act but to invalidate the Act as applied to any convicted felon,” the governor’s lawyers added. “North Carolina’s Felony Firearms Act is an important tool that balances the rights of law-abiding citizens’ right to bear arms and the State’s interest in public safety: it keeps dangerous weapons away from individuals who have proven more likely than law- abiding individuals to misuse firearms.”
“A key issue in this case is the impact of the Felony Firearms Act on the firearms rights of individuals convicted of non-violent felonies,” according to the court filing. “Through his pardon power, the Governor can make a non-violent felon eligible to have their firearms rights restored. Thus, the Governor can speak to the burden of the Act on individuals who committed non-violent felonies.”
Here's the problem for Stein, a Democrat. The state constitution says, "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," and while it does contain a provision immediately after that which explicitly says there's no inherent right to concealed carry, that's as far as it goes. In other words, nothing in the state's own constitution says that non-violent felons are exempted from "the people."
Further, what Stein is asking for here is an interest balancing by the court, though that particular line of legal thought was killed by Bruen. That apparently applies to state constitutional questions, too, so while that doesn't automatically mean gun rights for non-violent felons, it means his approach here is one that anti-gunners absolutely love, but no longer applies to such cases.
Stein goes on to claim that should the defendant, Mr. Drucker, win, it might open the door for violent felons to get guns.
To that, I point out how often violent felons are arrested later for so-called gun crimes, and note that they're getting guns already. They're not likely to start following the law because a non-violent felon gets his gun rights restored at the state level.
Man, North Carolina has to do a better job of electing governors. I know you all try, but damn.
And I love how Stein argues that because he can pardon people, he can speak on the matter. The dude is, like most governors, only going to pardon the connected or those whose pardon will make a political point. That's actually why non-violent felons have to go through the courts to get their gun rights back.
It would be different if North Carolina had some kind of office they could apply to and get their rights back, but they don't, and so this is important.
Not that it'll have greater ramifications since the feds also prohibit felons from owning guns, but still...
