Could a SCOTUS Second Amendment ruling undercut onerous and disparate criminal enforcement of gun prohibitions?
I noted in this post back in August, as part of a preview of the major pending SCOTUS Second Amendment case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Corlett, the considerable racial disparities in modern criminal enforcement of gun prohibitions. Helping me to detail how actual gun control laws are actually enforced in federal and state criminal justice systems was this interesting amicus brief filed by the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid caucus and lots of NY public defender offices. Notably, some of the themes of this amicus brief have been carried forward by its authors and others via an array of interesting commentary this fall (listed here in chronological order):
Via SCOTUSblog, “We are public defenders. New York’s gun laws eviscerate our clients’ Second Amendment rights.”
Via Inquest, “Second Class: For public defenders in New York, representing clients unjustly criminalized for gun possession is a matter of principle. Now, they have the Supreme Court’s attention.”
Via The Nation, “There’s No Second Amendment on the South Side of Chicago: Why public defenders are standing with the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association in the Supreme Court.”
Via Slate, “A Criminal Justice Reformer’s Case for Looser Gun Laws: Public defenders have found common cause with the NRA at the Supreme Court.”
I recommend all these pieces, which have too many interesting elements to highlight in a single blog post. I will just here flag a few quotes from the new Slate piece, which is an interview with Sharone Mitchell Jr., the public defender from Chicago who authored the piece in The Nation.
Our offense is called UUW, unlawful use of a weapon. And there are different types of UUWs. But the lowest-level felony, the Class 4 felony, 33 percent of the charges statewide come from 11 communities in Chicago, 11 communities in the entire state. You look at the UUW numbers, you look at how it’s used in Chicago and how it’s used outside of Chicago — and you would think that guns only exist in Chicago. And you would think guns only exist in a small number of communities. And that’s not correct. In other areas of the state, that’s just not the way they approach that situation….
We have this assumption that making things a felony disallows people from performing that act. And I just haven’t been convinced of that. At this point in Chicago, folks are not waiting for the government to tell them that they can carry. And I think too often we overestimate the power of the criminal justice system to solve problems or fix the things that we need. I think people are living under the assumption that because you’ve got this very complicated scheme for getting licensed, that means people aren’t going to carry. I think what it means is that people aren’t going to carry legally….
If you look at the population of Illinois prisons, there are more people in prison for weapons possession than there are for robbery. There are more people in prison for weapon possession than there is for kidnapping, more than arson or burglary or DUI or forgery or vehicle hijacking or retail theft. This is really becoming kind of the new war on drugs, where there’s a real problem, but our solution to the problem doesn’t actually fix the problem. In fact, it creates way more problems.
A few prior related posts: