Seventh Circuit vacates gun possession conviction for man with misdeameanor DV conviction

From the Wisconsin Law Journal:

The Seventh Circuit last week vacated a man’s conviction for possession of a firearm after having been convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.

However, the court did not strike the statute down as unconstitutional, but remanded the case to the district court to give the government the opportunity to “establish a reasonable fit” between the “statute’s means and its end.”

Addressing the record made before the district court, Judge Diane S. Sykes wrote for the court, “The government … has premised its argument almost entirely on Heller’s reference to the presumptive validity of felon-dispossession laws and reasoned by analogy that sec. 922(g)(9) therefore passes constitutional muster. That’s not enough.”

...

Examining the statute, and the individual facts in this case, the court noted that the firearm was a “conventional hunting gun,” and therefore within the scope of the Second Amendment as understood at the time of its adoption.

The court also noted that the ban on firearms possession by domestic-violence misdemeanants (the “Lautenberg Amendment”) is not longstanding, but “quite new” – it was enacted in 1996.

The court thus rejected the district court’s conclusion that the statute fell squarely within the Heller dicta. ...

Article here.