In what can only be described as an affront to every American citizen, an Obama-appointed judge granted foreign citizens the ability to use guns while illegally present on U.S. property.
U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman ruled on March 8 that a federal law prohibiting illegal immigrants from owning guns is unconstitutional, arguing the law did not adhere to the Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen that stipulated gun control laws must fit historical tradition.
The case was brought after Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, an illegally present foreign citizen, was charged for illegally possessing a gun. But Coleman argued that since Carbajal-Flores’ criminal record does not involve “improper use of a weapon” or violence during his arrest, Carbajal-Flores does not pose a risk to public safety and therefore he shouldn’t “be deprived of his Second Amendment right to bear arms in self-defense.”
But someone who broke the laws of the land and is illegally residing here is not entitled to the same rights that the Constitution secures for U.S. citizens. Foreign citizens instead must have their rights secured by their own governments.
The Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
The Supreme Court ruled in D.C. v. Heller that “the people” refers to “all members of the political community.” Foreign citizens are by definition members of a different political community. Writing for the majority, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote. “the people” “refers to a class of persons who are part of a national community or who have otherwise developed sufficient connection with this country to be considered part of that community.”
As attorney Kostas Moros explained in an analysis on The Reload, “someone who just entered the United States illegally has not developed any sufficient connection with the country.”
The topic was also argued more than a decade ago in a different case, with a panel of the Fourth Circuit ruling in U.S. v. Carpio-Leon that “illegal aliens are not law-abiding members of the political community and aliens who have entered the United States unlawfully have no more rights under the Second Amendment than do aliens outside of the United States seeking admittance.”
Even putting prior court cases aside, the Supreme Court requires lower courts to determine whether modern laws are consistent with historical U.S. traditions of firearm regulations. In some cases, U.S. laws disarmed different groups for a variety of reasons but “the common thread allowing that to happen is these were groups outside of the political community,” Moros explained in a separate post on X.
Native Americans, who until 1924 were not U.S. citizens, were prohibited from obtaining, buying, or trading firearms under a 1763 Pennsylvania law, Moros pointed out in his analysis. He further noted that a 1798 law in Kentucky prohibited a “negro, mulatto, or Indian whatsoever” — all non-citizens at the time — from owning or carrying a “gun, powder, shot, club, or other weapon whatsoever, offensive or defensive.”
This means historical tradition shows individuals who are not legal citizens have been regularly denied from owning a firearm. But Democrats are hellbent on allowing illegal immigrants to dismantle U.S. laws of all kinds.
For instance, the Los Angeles Police Department recently began hiring people who illegally entered the United States but received Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) status. DACA recipients must claim to have been brought to the United States illegally as a minor, but their claims are often unverifiable.
That means in Los Angeles, illegal immigrants could arrest and disarm a U.S. citizen who does have the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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