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Left: Chief Judge William Pryor, U.S. Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit (AP Photo/Cliff Owen); Right: FILE – In this April 10, 2013 file photo, craftsman Veetek Witkowski holds a newly assembled AR-15 rifle at the Stag Arms company in New Britain, Conn, Wednesday, April 10, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa).
A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s dramatic expansion of gun rights in the 2022 case New York Rifle Assn. v. Bruen does not mean that a federal ban on felons possessing firearms is now unconstitutional.
Andre Dubois tried to ship firearms wrapped in aluminum foil and hidden inside two deep fryers from an Express Copy Print & Ship store in Georgia to the Commonwealth of Dominica in 2018. The package was X-rayed while in transit, and federal officials seized the shipment and charged Dubois with attempting to smuggle firearms, delivering firearms to a common carrier for shipment without written notice, and possessing a firearm as a felon under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), known as the federal “felon in possession” statute.
Dubois appealed his convictions on a number of grounds, and while those appeals were pending, the Supreme Court handed down the Bruen decision. In June 2022, the six-member Bruen majority, led by Justice Clarence Thomas, said New York’s gun licensing regulations were unconstitutional because they restricted gun rights in a way that was not sufficiently grounded in “historical tradition” to satisfy the mandates of the Second Amendment.
Dubois did not dispute that he violated the federal statute, but he argued that his conviction should be vacated because the law — as now clarified under Bruen — violated his Second Amendment rights. Dubois’s claim rested on the argument that the Court’s ruling in Bruen “abrogated” — or demolished — an earlier precedent that upheld the felon in possession statute.
Although the Bruen ruling has become the basis for striking down gun regulations in a number of contexts, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that the felon in possession statute still stands.
