Court: Illegals don't have 2nd Amendment gun rights

FPI / September 3, 2024

Second Amendment rights do not apply to individuals who have entered the United States illegally, a federal appeals court has ruled.

A three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Aug. 27 that federal prohibition on illegal immigrants owning firearms is lawful.

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The ruling came in an appeal by Jose Paz Medina-Cantu, who had been arrested by Border Patrol agents in Texas in 2022 and charged with illegally possessing a handgun and unlawfully re-entering the country after being previously deported.

Medina-Cantu pleaded guilty and was sentenced last year to 15 months in prison, but he preserved the right to argue on appeal that the gun charge violated his right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment.

"The Second Amendment protects the right of ‘the people’ to keep and bear arms. Our court has held that the term ‘the people’ under the Second Amendment does not include illegal aliens," U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee, wrote in a concurring opinion.

"As to common sense, an illegal alien does not become ‘part of a national community’ by unlawfully entering it, any more than a thief becomes an owner of property by stealing it."

The judge added: "The Court has repeatedly explained that ‘an alien… does not become one of the people to whom these things are secured by our Constitution by an attempt to enter forbidden by law’… But that’s, of course, the very definition of an illegal alien – one who ‘attempts to enter’ our country in a manner ‘forbidden by law.’

"So illegal aliens are not part of ‘the people’ entitled to the protections of the Second Amendment."

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