Hunter Biden’s historic conviction on three felony gun charges will add significant weight to a blockbuster Second Amendment appeal to be decided in coming days by the Supreme Court.
Though the case deals with different circumstances and a different provision of a federal gun law, the high court’s decision this month on whether authorities may ban domestic abusers from owning guns could signal a path forward for Biden’s anticipated appeal – or make it harder for him to overturn his conviction.
“I definitely think they’re connected,” Jacob Charles, a law professor at Pepperdine University who focuses on the Second Amendment, said of the pending Supreme Court case and possible Biden appeal. “One possible outcome is that the court limits the gun prohibitions to people who are found to be dangerous in some way.”
Such a decision could give Biden an opening.
Hunter Biden was found guilty of three felony gun charges on Tuesday, the first time in American history that a president’s child has been convicted of a crime during their father’s term in office. The charges stem from a federal law that makes it a crime to own a weapon while being an “unlawful user of or addicted to” illegal drugs.
The president’s son was convicted of lying on a federal form when he swore he was not using – and was not addicted to – drugs as he purchased a revolver at a Delaware gun shop in 2018. He was also convicted of possessing the gun, given that he was struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine at the time.
A related prohibition of the federal disarmament law sits at the center of one of the Supreme Court’s most significant cases this term, US v. Rahimi. That case deals with a part of the law that bars Americans who are the subject of domestic violence restraining…
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