Wednesday • November 19 • 2025
Vol.XVII • No.XLVII
Manchester, N.H.
My first thought when I read this story was that the judge was using the context of the US Supreme Court’s Bruen decision to show how out of touch it was with modern American (for lack of a better word) values. That the Clinton-appointed judge was trying to pry cracks in the decision with an eye toward breaking it.
How?
[Glen] Price, now 37, had already been convicted of felony armed robbery three times in the past, federal law prohibited him from owning a gun. So officers charged Price with possessing a firearm as a felon, a federal statute with a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years.
On November 2, however, the federal case against Price was dismissed after U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman, a Clinton appointee, determined that the statute prohibiting felons from possessing firearms was unconstitutional. That law “imposes a far greater burden on the right to keep and bear arms than the historical categorical exclusions from the people’s Second Amendment right,” Gettleman wrote in the 22-page decision.
Gettleman is not not wrong. The Second Amendment makes no distinction because the right to self-defense is natural and inherent. You are born with it, and the government is prohibited from denying that. In fact, their job (at least referring to our government) is to protect that right. Bruen affirms this, but the decades-long epidemic of hoplophobia (fear of firearms) has nurtured an unconscious animus toward a well-behaved culture of armed citizens that manifests as the embrace of limitations on the natural right. To catalyze this, opponents paint pictures of the Wild West, shootouts in the streets, and disagreements being settled with gunfire.
My response would be, what, like every day in Chicago or Baltimore, or almost any Democrat-run city with more anti-gun regulations than you could carry comfortably from city hall to your car, assuming it wasn’t stolen while you were inside?
I will add that the elimination of gun-free zones and support for armed, trained, law-abiding citizens would immediately reduce the incidence of mass shootings. (Related: Should Owners of Gun-Free Zones Be Liable if Disarmed Citizens Are Shot or Killed?)
Even those allegedly struggling with mental health issues continue to prove themselves competent enough to find target-rich environments where someone has disarmed everyone.
Having said all that, I don’t think US District Judge Robert Gettleman is trying to make that case. On the contrary, I believe he has deliberately advanced a process of appeals destined to reach the nation’s Highest Court, where the matter will come head-to-head with Bruen.
Can the Justices comport the context of Bruen with a ruling that allows felons found guilty of past gun charges to possess firearms legally?
I want to say yes, but I won’t. Should the case reach the US Supreme Court, the pressure that will be brought to bear will be intense – perhaps even ‘Dobbs v Jackson’ Intense. I don’t think Chief Justice Roberts would survive that. He would inevitably vote with the (so-called) Liberal justices and put the first cracks in Bruen with the goal of turning it into a paper tiger.
It’s just a theory. I could be wrong.
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