Gun Free School Zone Case in Texas Appealed to Fifth Circuit

A “Gun Free School Zone” case has been appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The appeal attacks the Gun Free School Zone Act (GFSZA) as being an unconstitutional infringement of rights protected by the Second Amendment. An amicus brief has been filed by the California Rifle and Pistol Association (CRPA), the Second Amendment Law Center, and the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF).

From January 5th to the 29th of 2023, Ahmed Allam spent several hours in the afternoon and evening parked across the street from a parochial school, St. Anthony Cathedral Basilica School in Beaumont, Texas. Police were called nine times. On January 25, police warned Mr. Allam that the plastic frame around his license plate was obscuring the state of registration, a violation. On Sunday evening, January 29, 2023, Mr. Allam was parked across from the school from 4:00 P.M. to about 9:05 P.M. when he started to drive away from the school. A police officer followed him and pulled him over for failing to signal a turn. He refused to talk to the police and was arrested for the license plate violation.

The car was searched. An AR-15 rifle, two 50-round boxes of ammunition, and a 30-round magazine were found.

A grand jury charged Mr. Allam with a single count of violating the Gun Free School Zone Act. Mr. Allam challenged the law on an “as applied” basis, claiming the GFSZA violated the Second Amendment. The district court judge, Marcia A. Crone, found the Gun Free School Zone Act was Constitutional. Mr. Allam pleaded guilty without a plea deal and was sentenced to 5 years in prison on January 30, 2024. Mr. Allam submitted a timely appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

> The Gun Free School Zone Act is blatantly unconstitutional. <

Unconstitutional, and nonsensical. It’s one thing to prohibit firearms on school grounds. But the act also prohibits firearms on public property NEAR school grounds.

The distance is 1000 feet. So now a citizen has to be an excellent estimator of distance. Park your car an inch too close, and you’re in trouble pal.

By the way, the Act is just another rotten apple given to the nation courtesy of the wonderful Bush family (Bush I in this case).

For the curious, here’s the Act, including its exceptions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-Free_School_Zones_Act_of_1990#Provisions

Often times constitutional law is made based on people who are not “good actors.” Thankfully, this guy never actually did anything to harm the kids in that school.

Nonetheless, good actor, or not, this law is unconstitutional. Under the Bruen standard, he arguably had a right to bear arms outside of his home that implicated the Second Amendment. As such, any law that infringes upon that right has to go through a certain process to determine if it is constitutional or not. First, if the 2nd is implicated, the burden of proof automatically shifts to the government. Now, the government can prove that the law is constitutional, but only if it can point to one or more laws - which were enforced - that were identical or very similar at the time that the 2nd was ratified. The fact is that the only laws dealing with firearms and schools at the time prohibited *students* under the age of majority from having or carrying them on school grounds. The reasoning behind such law is that the students were minors, and therefore deemed incapable of bearing arms by the schools, which were acting “in loco parentis.“ however, no such restrictions supplied to adults, or More specifically to adults who worked or entered the campus of a school. Other than that, there is no such law that existed at or near the time of the ratification of the Second Amendment that is an analog to the law in question here. This will undoubtedly get appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court level and, if the Supreme Court is consistent, it will rule this law to be unconstitutional. However, consistency doesn’t seem to apply to either Justice Roberts or Justice Barrett, so we will have to see.

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