'Only a matter of time': How Trump’s would-be assassin could end up expanding gun rights

21 September 2024

Ryan Routh — who was apprehended by law enforcement after allegedly attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump at one of his golf courses — could end up being the catalyst for Supreme Court intervention on gun rights.

The Department of Justice didn't charge Routh with attempted murder, but with two firearms-related offenses. One of those charges was possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, which Politico reports could end up touching off a battle that may culminate in further action by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS).

In 2022, SCOTUS ruled 6-3 in favor of expanded gun rights in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen case, which ruled that firearm regulations not related to historical practices dating back to the nation's founding are invalid. UCLA law professor Adam Winkler told the outlet that it was "only a matter of time" until SCOTUS will have to settle the issue of convicted felons owning firearms, and that Routh's case could be what triggers action from the High Court given confusion at the district and circuit court level.

"This kind of split among the federal courts is one of the biggest predictors of whether the Supreme Court will step into a controversy," Winkler said.

He noted that the historical precedent benchmark SCOTUS set in the Bruen case was racial in nature, given that racial minorities were not afforded the rights of citizenship until the 14th Amendment was ratified (not to mention the persistence of Jim Crow laws through the mid-20th century).

"In the 17- and 1800s, America often barred African Americans from possessing firearms," Winkler told Politico. "Is that law evidence that [the] government has the power to ban dangerous people from possessing firearms, because people thought that African Americans and other racial minorities were dangerous?"

The vague wording of the Bruen decision means that the question of whether stripping convicted felons of the right to own firearms — as the NYPD did with former President Donald Trump after his 34 felony convictions earlier this year — could finally be answered in the process of Routh mounting his own criminal defense. Kelly Roskam, who is the director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions, said the 2nd Amendment didn't factor in a world where civilians readily have access to advanced weapons used in theaters of war.

“The modern world is a lot different,” Roskam said. “The founding fathers weren’t carrying AR-15s around.”

Interestingly, the precedent set by SCOTUS' conservative supermajority in Bruen could backfire, given the efforts of the 2nd Amendment's author, James Madison, to regulate firearms in Virginia. Politico reported in 2022 that the founding father drafted legislation that would have prevented all gun owners in the Old Dominion State from carrying firearms outside of their own private property "unless whilst performing military duty."

A year before he died, former Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens – appointed by Republican Gerald Ford — called for the repeal of the 2nd Amendment in a New York Times op-ed published a month after the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida. The retired SCOTUS justice regarded the amendment as a "relic of the 18th century" that was specifically for a "well-regulated militia" to take the place of a standing army, not for all citizens to have unfettered access to all forms of weaponry.

Click here to read Politico's article in its entirety.

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