A federal judge in Louisiana paused an entertainer’s trial for gun possession until the U.S. Supreme Court decides if a federal law barring certain people from having firearms is constitutional.
The criminal proceeding comes after the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022 that there is a constitutional right to bear firearms in public for self-defense.
The Court also held that gun restrictions must be deeply rooted in U.S. history if they are to survive constitutional scrutiny.
The Bruen decision has spurred challenges to gun laws nationwide.
At the same time, several states are resisting the ruling and have doubled down on gun restrictions.
Kentrell DeSean Gaulden, 24, a popular rapper, singer, and songwriter who is known professionally as YoungBoy Never Broke Again, has reportedly been under house arrest for years.
He was previously convicted of aggravated assault with a firearm in 2017.
Mr. Gaulden’s attorneys argue that the Bruen precedent, which safeguards Second Amendment rights, makes the federal statute under which their client is being prosecuted unconstitutional.
The felon-in-possession law runs afoul of the Constitution because it’s “inconsistent with our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” they have argued.
In September 2020, Mr. Gaulden was indicted on multiple counts under Title 18, U.S. Code, Section 922(g), which makes it unlawful for convicted felons to possess firearms, subject to a fine and up to 10 years of imprisonment.
One of the counts was dismissed earlier this month by Judge Shelly Dick of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana in Baton Rouge, who was appointed in 2013 by President Barack Obama.
In response to a motion filed by Mr. Gaulden’s lawyers, Judge Dick stayed the case because the Supreme Court is currently deliberating United States v. Rahimi, “where there has been a similar challenge to a related firearm prohibition—[Section] 922(g)(8), barring the possession of firearms by persons subject to domestic-violence restraining orders.”
The new order was docketed on March 13.
The Rahimi case was argued on Nov. 7, 2023, and a decision is expected by June.
It concerns the potential overturning of a lower court ruling invalidating a federal law that bars people under domestic violence-related restraining orders from possessing firearms.
In Rahimi, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit struck down Section 922(g)(8) of Title 18 of the U.S. Code, a 1994 law that prohibits a person who is subject to a domestic restraining order from having a gun.
The Fifth Circuit determined that the law had ceased to be constitutional in light of Bruen.
The ban on the possession of firearms by someone under a domestic restraining order “is an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted,” the appeals court said at the time.
The case involves Zackey Rahimi of Texas, who previously entered a guilty plea to violating the statute.
Mr. Rahimi was involved in five shooting incidents after the restraining order was entered against him in February 2020.
After the Bruen decision was handed down, he asked the courts to review his conviction given the change in Second Amendment jurisprudence.
Second Amendment advocates say Mr. Rahimi, whose family emigrated from Afghanistan, is hardly an ideal spokesman for their cause given his checkered past, but they stand by their argument that the Fifth Circuit ruled correctly.
At the Supreme Court oral argument, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said that “guns and domestic abuse are a deadly combination.”
“As this court has said, all too often the only difference between a battered woman and a dead woman is the presence of a gun. Armed abusers also pose grave danger to police officers responding to domestic violence calls and to the public at large as Zackey Rahimi’s own conduct shows,” she said.
“To address that acute threat, Congress and 48 states and territories temporarily disarm individuals subjected to domestic violence protective orders.”
The federal law targets “the most dangerous domestic abusers,” Ms. Prelogar said.
“It applies only if after notice and a hearing, a court makes an express finding that the person poses a credible threat to an intimate partner’s physical safety or imposes a specific prohibition on the use of physical force.
“And the disarmament lasts only as long as the order remains in effect.”
Judge Dick also wrote in her order that the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Collette also stayed a challenge to Section 922(g) pending the Supreme Court’s approaching decision in Rahimi.
The judge directed attorneys to file within 14 days of the Rahimi ruling a brief stating “(a) whether the case should be unstayed and Defendant’s Motion should be set for oral argument, or (b) whether the stay should continue until the Fifth Circuit renders a decision in Collette.”
The Epoch Times reached out for comment to Mr. Gaulden’s attorneys, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice, which is prosecuting the case, but didn’t receive any replies as of press time.
This article by Matthew Vadum appeared March 14, 2024, in The Epoch Times.