The Supreme Court declined to address a federal ban on felons owning guns, despite a plea from the Biden administration urging the court to resolve disagreements, USA Today reports. Instead, the high court sent cases back for further review in light of the justices' decision last month upholding a law aimed at keeping guns away from domestic abusers. The cases involved very different circumstances. One involved an Iowa man with a long criminal record that included convictions for theft, assault and intimidation with a dangerous weapon. In another, a Minnesota man who had served time for selling cocaine said he should not have been charged for having a gun after serving his sentence. A Pennsylvania man argues his decades-old conviction for falsifying his income on an application for food stamps should not prevent him from having a firearm.
According to the Justice Department, the statute being tested in all the cases was used in more than 7,600 convictions in 2022. The convictions accounted for 12% of all federal criminal cases. The dispute about whether people convicted of both violent and non-violent felonies can be barred from having a firearm has had “widespread and disruptive effects” that are threatening public safety," Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said. The split in how courts resolve the cases arose after the Supreme Court in 2022 struck down a New York law requiring state residents to have "proper cause" to carry a handgun. The court said gun prohibitions must be grounded in history. In last month’s opinion upholding gun bans for domestic abusers, Chief Justice John Roberts noted some courts mistakenly read that decision to mean they had to find a “historical twin” for regulation, rather than a "historical analogue." Roberts said that the decision, and two other recent ones that have reshaped the Second Amendment debate, were not an “exhaustive analysis” of the amendment’s limits and protections.