(ConservativeInsider.org) – A federal judge released a 5-time felon who was facing a mandatory 15 years in prison for a gun offense citing a federal judge’s ruling it unconstitutional to bar convicted criminals from owning firearms, the New York Post reported.
Glen Prince, 37, was arrested in September 2021 for rubbing three men on a train in Chicago. When police arrested Prince, he was in possession of a stolen credit card, cocaine, and a fully loaded handgun. Federal law prevents convicted felons from owning a firearm, and Prince had convictions for three armed robberies and aggravated battery of a police officer.
But earlier this month, Judge Robert Gettleman dismissed Prince’s case and let him walk free.
Citing the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in Bruen, Judge Gettleman ruled that the law barring convicted criminals from owning a gun violated the Second Amendment.
While the judge conceded the dangers of gun violence in communities that “pose a threat to the orderly functioning” of the Second Amendment, he said prosecutors in the case failed to establish that convicted felons should be excluded from those who are protected under the Second Amendment.
Judge Gettleman wrote in his decision that the federal ban on gun ownership for convicted felons was a greater threat to liberty than the 1791 law to take guns from the colonists who refused to declare loyalty to the newly established United States.
The judge argued that the law prohibiting felons from owning guns places a “greater burden” on the Second Amendment “than the historical exclusions from the people’s Second Amendment right.”
He said prosecutors failed to demonstrate why today’s gun violence and the increased “lethality” of modern firearms “justify a different result.”
Judge Gettleman ordered Prince’s release.
However, Prince was quickly rearrested by Chicago police on separate charges and is currently being held in Cook County Jail without bond as federal prosecutors appeal Judge Gettleman’s ruling.
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