A serial armed robber has escaped a mandatory 15-year prison sentence for illegal gun possession after a Chicago judge said convicted felons are also protected by the Second Amendment.
Glen Prince, 37, already had three armed robberies and the aggravated battery of a police officer under his belt when he was arrested for robbing three men on a CTA train in September 2021.
Police found cocaine, a stolen credit card, a stash of bullets and a fully loaded 9mm Smith and Wesson on him when they arrested him, despite federal law prohibiting felons from owning handguns.
But Judge Robert Gettleman dismissed the suit, citing Revolutionary War statutes and a memorable Supreme Court ruling from last year emphasizing that modern gun control laws must have “historical analogues” to survive a legal challenge.
“While there are strong policy reasons to do everything possible to keep guns off our streets and out of our communities, this court cannot find such a historical analogy,” he said in his ruling.
Serial armed robber Glen Prince, 37, was freed by a court that ruled the federal ban on felons owning firearms unconstitutional following a Supreme Court decision last year
Judge Robert Gettleman (left) said prosecutors have failed to prove that criminals are excluded from “the people” protected by the Second Amendment and cited last year’s Supreme Court ruling by Justice Clarence Thomas (right ) that demands ‘historical analogues’ for weapons. control laws
In Chicago alone, hundreds of convicted felons will stand trial for illegal gun possession.
But Gettleman argued that the ban on criminals’ possession of guns posed a greater threat to freedom than the 1791 law that took guns away from colonists who would not express their loyalty to the new republic.
He said he had searched for rulings dating back to Rhode Island in 1677 and New Netherland in 1639, without finding a satisfactory precedent for the ban.
And he said prosecutors have failed to prove that criminals are excluded from “the people” protected by the Second Amendment.
State gun control laws have begun to lapse across the country since last year’s Supreme Court Bruen case, which was brought by the New York Rifle and Pistol Association to challenge the state’s restrictive concealed carry law .
Despite New York’s 1911 law, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas ruled that gun control laws “must be consistent with the historical tradition of the nation.”
The decision was hailed as a “watershed victory” by the NRA, which emphasized that “the right to self-defense and defend your family and loved ones should not end in your home.”
But it sparked outrage from gun control advocates, including President Joe Biden, who said he was “deeply disappointed” in a ruling that “violates both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom said it marked a “dark day in America,” while New York Mayor Eric Adams said it “opened another river that flows into the sea of gun violence in our city and in our land will nourish’.
“We cannot allow New York to become the wild, wild West,” he added.
But dozens of state laws have since been overturned, including bans on people experiencing domestic violence, restrictions on guns at summer camps and churches, and even a law requiring guns to be serialized.
The government hit back last month, demanding that the Supreme Court reverse a Philadelphia appellate court decision that the ban could not apply to a man convicted of food stamp fraud.
“Many aspects of Second Amendment doctrine rest on the premise that the amendment protects only law-abiding citizens, not criminals,” Justice Department attorneys wrote.
The Supreme Court’s ruling (6-3) came along ideological lines, with the court’s conservative majority all voting in favor of striking down New York’s law.
Judge Gettleman conceded that his decision was balanced because “violence ravages our communities and arming those who may pose a threat to the orderly functioning of society sets a dangerous precedent.”
And he conceded that guns have become more powerful and violence has become more ubiquitous since the 1790s, but he insisted that this “did not justify a different outcome.”
“The gun violence problem in this country is devastating, but it does not change this outcome under Bruen, which this court finds rests on the seriousness of the (firearms law) rather than its categorical prohibition,” he wrote.
The U.S. Attorney General’s office immediately appealed the ruling, and Prince was immediately rearrested by Chicago police on separate charges.