Supreme Court Rejects Gun Rights for Felons

Newsmax.com ^ | Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2002 | Newsmax.com wires

[jjm2111]

Of course, BATF is still loaded with Clintonista/Renoid types which accounts for its dereliction of duty in this case.

Of, that I'm sure.

[rellimpank]

--like the one used by Clinton to pardon his convicted drug dealer buddy whose name escapes me. The pardon specifically returned to him his "right to possess firearms"--

[Double Tap]

BATF was defunded by congress in 1992 or 93 from doing what Bean wanted. Which was to reinstate his 2nd Amendment rights. What the Supreme court ruled on the Bean case was that Bean had no right to go to the courts for due process when BATF had not ruled either way on his petition for rights. Since BATF has been defunded from doing this sort of thing, it will never rule one way or the other.

So Bean has lost his rights for committing no crime, and his rights will never be restored because the agency that does that has no funds for it. And SCOTUS thinks that is just fine!

[Eric in the Ozarks]

This is certainly a bizarre case.

[RandomUserName]

It's even uglier than just the gun rights issue.

Justice Clarence Thomas said the absence of a application denial by the ATF "precludes judicial review" by a federal judge

This has general application to all federal agencies. If they ignore you, you have no recourse in the courts. I can think of all sorts of ways the feds (and locals too) will abuse this notion once they figure it out.

If they don't want you do do something, they will just ignore your request to do so. Yet another reason why we shouldn't be asking permission from the feds to do what God has already allowed.

[Double Tap]

Absolutely. What is even more troubling is that Thomas and Scalia marched in lock step with all the other liberal court members on this.

[Double Tap]

If they don't want you do do something, they will just ignore your request to do so. Yet another reason why we shouldn't be asking permission from the feds to do what God has already allowed.

Yep. The "Rule of Law" is meaningless at this point. They ignore the Constitution, and they ignore their own laws and procedures.

[Eala]

Yep. The "Rule of Law" is meaningless at this point.

The "Rule of Law" died October 2nd, 2002, when a state supreme court decided that a very plainly and clearly written law did not mean what it said because it was inconvenient to the ruling political party; the SCOTUS let that decision stand.

[berserker]

Link to Supreme Court decision United States v. Bean.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

I wonder if the guy was a year-round loser...
I've heard most folks get Mexican arrests quashed before they go very far.

[packrat01]

Where Bean screwed the pooch was in the application to have a right restored by an agency that has no authority (they have the power, but not the authority) to deny the right in the first place.

That said, he won't be allowed to play by the evil.fed.gov rules and be a "licensed" dealer. Table at a flea-market...

nineot, I'd always wondered how to spell dupa. Use it a lot, but couldn't spell it...

[Teacher317]

This has been posted before, but bears repeating. One particularly sharp FReeper noted that all the fedgov has to do now is mandate that every newspaper get a particular approval stamp from some newly-created bureaucracy to keep operating... then defund the bureacracy from issuing those stamps. TA-DA! Now the Right to a Free Press has been repealed, since no potential publisher can go to SCOTUS until that bureacracy refuses to issue them a stamp. They can easily to the same for Free Assembly, Religious Expression, etc. The "legitimate" path to a de facto repeal of the Constitution has just been laid.

[ninenot]

Thomas and Scalia ruled EXACTLY according to the Constitution. The fact that BATF and COngress are in need of swift kicks is not germane.

SCOTUS has no authority meddling in budget matters. That's Congress' job.

[ninenot]

I never asked. Never tell. Works good for me and my family.

[ninenot]

Well, it would be a lot of fun to watch the NYTimes go out of business. But it won't happen, any more than the 2nd A will be repealed in this fashion.

The case was NOT about the 2A: it was about Congressional funding.

Besides, you have to have a felony conviction to get into the position Bean did in the first place...few of us have those (yet...)

[SSN558]

Every once in a while you see a wife or significant other doing the Brady check thing at a gun store or gun show, while the man kinda hangs loose 20 feet away. Hmmmm

[Freebird Forever]

Is that legal?

As long as his fingerprints don't show up on the firearms, yup!

[Redleg Duke]

I guess that all depends on what YOUR definition of "is" is!

[Double Tap]

That is just the point, Bean did not have a felony conviction in the good ole USA. His record is clean. He did not commit a crime, period. The SCOTUS knows this, and ignored it.