A jury convicted former president and current Republican nominee Donald J. Trump of 34 felonies on Thursday, which will bar him from possessing firearms.
While the convictions are for felonies under New York law, they trigger the federal ban on convicts owning guns. That means authorities will likely require Trump to turn over any firearms in his possession.
“What is commonly referred to as the felon-in-possession ban will apply to Trump because these New York crimes are punishable by more than one year in prison,” Gabriel Malor, a federal appellate lawyer and legal commentator, told The Reload.
Trump’s felony convictions will likely shake up the 2024 election. They will undoubtedly put the gun-rights movement in a weaker state. The candidate championing gun owners is no longer legally allowed to be one.
The law already barred the former president from obtaining new guns because of the numerous federal felony indictments against him, which are still being litigated. The New York convictions turn that prohibition into a total ban on ownership. It’s unclear if Donald Trump currently owns firearms and, if so, how many.
However, he has spent most of his political career courting gun owners. The National Rifle Association, which endorsed him earlier this month, was among the only major organizations to back his successful 2016 bid. He has spoken at every one of their annual meetings since that time.
He has sought to draw a stark contrast between himself and President Joe Biden on gun control.
“Joe Biden and his thugs will do everything in their power to confiscate your guns and annihilate your God-given right to self-defense,” he said during a February speech to the NRA in Pennsylvania. “A meaningful Second Amendment, which you have, it’s under siege. They got nowhere with me, but there are a lot of other things happening with Biden.”
He even recently announced a new initiative to turn out gun owners this fall, fretting they “don’t vote.”
There is some chance Trump could the felon-in-possession gun ban or benefit from other challenges other defendants have brought against the underlying federal law in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, which created a new standard for judging Second Amendment challenges.
“Several challenges to this law are percolating in the federal courts after the Supreme Court’s instruction last year that firearms regulations violate the Second Amendment if they are not consistent with the nation’s ‘historical tradition of firearm regulation,'” Malor said.
Felon-in-possession charges are the most common federal gun prosecutions in the nation. However, multiple defendants across the country have challenged those charges with varying degrees of success. A circuit split has already developed on whether the statute is constitutional as applied to non-violent felons like Trump, with the Ninth Circuit finding in favor of one such defendant earlier this month. Although, Malor noted the federal appellate court responsible for Trump’s state of residence recently came down on the other side of the question.
“However, the Eleventh Circuit, which covers Florida where Trump resides, recently ruled that the felon-in-possession ban is constitutional,” he said.
Still, disagreement among the lower courts may motivate the Supreme Court to take up a case dealing with this question. It could also push the Court to provide an answer in US v. Rahimi, the Second Amendment challenge it is currently considering.
