7th Circuit Court: Illegal Immigrants Have Second …

In a wordillegal immigrants have Second Amendment rights too.

The case was titled United States v. Meza-Rodriguez, and the decision was handed down on August 20.

The Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports that the decision was written by Judge Diane Wood for a panel that included Judges Frank Easterbrook and Joel Flaum.

As for the background to the case, Wood explained that Mariano Meza-Rodriguez, a citizen of Mexico, was arrested in August 2013 [and found to be] carrying a .22 caliber cartridge. Because he did not have documentation to show that he was in the United States lawfully, he was charged as being in violation of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(5), which forbids illegal immigrants from possessing firearms in the United States.

Meza-Rodriquez was indicted. He then challenged the indictment by claiming 922(g)(5) impermissibly infringed on his rights under the Second Amendment to the Constitution. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin rejected Meza-Rodriquezs claim, thereby upholding the indictment. He appealed the District Courts decision, thus bringing the case to the 7th Circuit.

In working through the case, Wood indicated that certain aspects of the language inDistrict of Columbia v. Heller (2008) support the view that all people, including non-U.S. citizens, whether or not they are authorized to be in the country, enjoy at least some rights under the Second Amendment.

She elaborated:

In a post-Heller world, where it is now clear that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is no second-class entitlement, we see no principled way to carve out the Second Amendment and say that the unauthorized (or maybe all noncitizens) are excluded.No language in the Amendment supports such a conclusion, nor, as we have said, does a broader consideration of the Bill of Rights.

Yet the 7th Circuit upheld the District Courts rulingwhich upheld Meza-Rodriguezs indictmenton the grounds that the Second Amendment does not preclude certain restrictions on the right to bear arms, including the one imposed by 922(g)(5).

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.

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7th Circuit Court: Illegal Immigrants Have Second ...