United States v. Minter

635 F.Supp.3d 352

UNITED STATES of America, v. Victorious MINTER, Defendant.

3:22-CR-135

United States District Court, M.D. Pennsylvania

Filed October 18, 2022

James Buchanan, Assistant U.S. Attorney, DOJ-USAO, Scranton, PA, for United States of America.

Brandon R. Reish, Public Defender, Federal Public Defender's Office, Scranton, PA, for Defendant.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

Robert D. Mariani, United States District Judge

I. INTRODUCTION AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY

On April 5, 2022, a federal grand jury returned a one-count Indictment charging Defendant Victorious Minter with being a Felon in Possession of Firearm, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1).¹ Defendant Minter subsequently filed a Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 26) on August 26, 2022, asserting that § 922(g)(1) is now unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court's June 23, 2022, decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, — U.S. —, 142 S.Ct. 2111, 213 L.Ed.2d 387 (2022). Defendant requests that the Court "declare § 922(g)(1) unconstitutional and dismiss the Indictment against him for failure to state an offense." (Doc. 26, at 3). The Government timely filed a Brief in Opposition to Minter's Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 28), to which Defendant filed a Reply Brief (Doc. 31). Defendant's Motion to Dismiss is now ripe for resolution.

For the reasons set forth herein, the Court will deny the Motion to Dismiss (Doc. 26).

II. ANALYSIS

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that "[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." U.S. CONST. amend. II. In Bruen, the Supreme Court, consistent with its precedent, re-affirmed that "the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual right to keep and bear arms for self-defense." Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2125 (citing District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 128 S.Ct. 2783, 171 L.Ed.2d 637 (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 130 S.Ct. 3020, 177 L.Ed.2d 894 (2010)); see also, id. at 2122 ("In [Heller and McDonald] we recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to possess a handgun in the home for self-defense.").

Although the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms, this right is "not unlimited". Heller, 554 U.S. at 595, 626, 128 S.Ct. 2783. As the Supreme Court in Heller explained:

Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. From Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose . . . For example, the majority of the 19th-century courts to consider the question held that prohibitions on carrying concealed weapons were lawful under the Second Amendment or state analogues . . . . Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

Id. at 626-627, 128 S.Ct. 2783 (internal citations omitted). See also, McDonald, 561 U.S. at 786, 130 S.Ct. 3020 ("We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as 'prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,' 'laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.' We repeat those assurances here.") (internal citation omitted).²

In examining its precedent, the Supreme Court in Bruen set forth the appropriate test a Court must apply in determining whether a firearm regulation violates the Second Amendment:

In keeping with Heller, we hold that when the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. To justify its regulation, the government may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest. Rather, the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual's conduct falls outside the Second Amendment's unqualified command.

Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2126 (internal quotation marks omitted). See id. at 2127 ("the government must affirmatively prove that its firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms."); id. at 2130 (re-iterating the standard for applying the Second Amendment). A Court must therefore first address the threshold question of whether the Second Amendment's plain text covers the individual's conduct at issue and, if it determines the conduct is covered, engage in an analysis of whether the Government has affirmatively demonstrated that the regulation at issue is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation.

The Bruen Court provided guidance to aid courts in determining whether the Government has affirmatively demonstrated that the regulation at issue is consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation, explaining that "[i]n some cases," the inquiry that courts must undertake to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment's text and historical understanding "will be fairly straightforward", Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2131.

For instance, when a challenged regulation addresses a general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century, the lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. Likewise, if earlier generations addressed the societal problem, but did so through materially different means, that also could be evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional. And if some jurisdictions actually attempted to enact analogous regulations during this timeframe, but those proposals were rejected on constitutional grounds, that rejection surely would provide some probative evidence of unconstitutionality.

Id.

Nonetheless, the Court in Bruen recognized that while some "historical analogies . . . are relatively simple to draw, other cases implicating unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach." Id. at 2132. "The regulatory challenges posed by firearms today are not always the same as those that preoccupied the Founders in 1791 or the Reconstruction generation in 1868. Fortunately, the Founders created a Constitution - and a Second Amendment - intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs. Although its meaning is fixed according to the understandings of those who ratified it, the Constitution can, and must, apply to circumstances beyond those the Founders specifically anticipated." Id. at 2132 (internal quotation marks and citations omitted). Thus,

When confronting such present-day firearm regulations, this historical inquiry that courts must conduct will often involve reasoning by analogy - a commonplace task for any lawyer or judge. Like all analogical reasoning, determining whether a historical regulation is a proper analogue for a distinctly modern firearm regulation requires a determination of whether the two regulations are "relevantly similar." And because "[e]verything is similar in infinite ways to everything else," one needs "some metric enabling the analogizer to assess which similarities are important and which are not[.]"

Bruen, 142 S.Ct. at 2132 (internal citations omitted). "[A]nalogical reasoning requires only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin." Id. at 2133 (italics in original). Further, the Bruen Court, while declining to "provide an exhaustive survey of the features that render regulations relevantly similar under the Second Amendment", reasoned that

Heller and McDonald point toward at least two metrics: how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen's right to armed self-defense. As we stated in Heller and repeated in McDonald, "individual self-defense is 'the central component' of the Second Amendment right." McDonald, 561 U.S. at 767, 130 S.Ct. 3020 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 599, 128 S.Ct. 2783); see also id., at 628, 128 S.Ct. 2783 ("the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right"). Therefore, whether modern and historical regulations impose a comparable burden on the right of armed self-defense and whether that burden is comparably justified are " 'central' " considerations when engaging in an analogical inquiry.

Id. at 2132-2133 (italics in original).

Here, in light of the Supreme Court's decision in Bruen, Defendant Minter invites this Court to set aside over 10 years of Supreme Court and Circuit Court precedent and to examine, on a blank slate, the constitutionality of § 922(g)(1). However, Bruen does not, as Defendant suggests, invalidate or overturn the legal principles and analysis set forth in Heller and McDonald, and much of the legal reasoning in Circuit decisions since Heller remains intact. The Supreme Court's decision in Bruen did not alter the analyses set forth in Heller and McDonald, but instead, relying extensively on those two cases, clarified the appropriate test that must be applied in addressing Second Amendment challenges to firearms...