Details

• Sponsor - DeWine
• Proposed - April 28, 2005
• Congressional Record Link - S.954
• Amends - Section 922 of title 18, United States Code
• Amendments - None.
• Vote - None yet.
• Results - No change in law.

Status

April 28, 2005 - Read twice and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

Synopsis

S.954 adds people convicted of some foreign felonies to the list of people prohibited from buying firearms and ammunition. It differs from HR1931 in that the conviction must be for a crime that is defined as a crime in the US.

Analysis

S.954 is the second Congressional reaction to the Small v. United States decision. It is an improvement in that the prohibiting crime must be a criminal offense in the US. But, the standard is "the conviction would be punishable in any court within the United States by a term of imprisonment exceeding 1 year". And it still assumes that the foreign court was able to provide a level of justice adequate to remove Constitutional Rights within the US.

Hypothetically a person is convicted of a crime in Germany. Some locality in California has a similar law. That person could now be a prohibited person, even though he may never have lived in California and should not be held responsible for knowing that law exists.

Simply managing the enforcement of this law would be virtually impossible. Is the federal government going to get information feeds from foreign governments? How would an individual deal with an error in the information?

The bottom line is that S.954 would be virtually unenforceable. This bill also makes assumptions about unnamed foreign courts that may be false. It should be dropped.

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment 2.0!