Last September, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung caused a kerfuffle by mistakenly reporting that the former president had bought a Glock 19 pistol decorated with his portrait during a visit to a gun dealer in Summerville, South Carolina. At the time, Trump faced four criminal indictments, which would have made him guilty of several federal felonies—the purchase itself, plus two more felonies related to falsely presenting himself as an eligible buyer—if he had actually completed the transaction that Cheung described. Now that a New York jury has convicted Trump of 34 felonies involving falsification of business records, he is barred from possessing firearms as well as buying them.
Trump, who had a concealed carry permit, owned at least two handguns prior to his conviction: a Heckler & Koch HK45 pistol and a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver. As the New York Post notes, Trump will now have to surrender those guns and any others he has acquired or transfer them to someone (such as one of his sons) who is legally allowed to own firearms. The fact that Trump, a self-described “very strong person on the Second Amendment,” has lost the right to keep and bear arms may add to the delight of opponents who welcomed his conviction. But however you feel about Trump, this detail is a reminder that federal law arbitrarily strips people of their Second Amendment rights for reasons that have nothing to do with public safety.
Leaving aside the shaky legal reasoning that allowed New York prosecutors to convert a hush payment into 34 felonies, falsification of business records, even to aid or conceal “another crime,” is not the sort of offense that marks someone as apt to injure or kill people with a gun. 18 USC 922(g)(1), which prohibits receipt or possession of a firearm by anyone who has been convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration, is “wildly overinclusive,” UCLA law professor Adam Winkler notes, because it encompasses many people with no history of violence.
Hellbound and Down 