In this case, Bryan David Range pleaded guilty in the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster County to one count of making a false statement to obtain food stamps. He later explained that he was earning between $9.00 and $9.50 an hour to support his his wife and three young children on $300 per week. Range’s wife applied for food stamps but understated Range’s income, which she and Range signed. Range later took responsibility for the misrepresentation.

Range received three years’ probation (which he completed) and had to pay thousands in fines. However, when Range pleaded guilty in 1995, his conviction was classified as a Pennsylvania misdemeanor punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment. That triggered the federal ban. When his wife recently bought him a deer-hunting rifle, he learned that he was barred under federal law. District Judge Gene E.K. Pratter ruled against him. …

Judge Thomas Hardiman wrote the majority opinion, supported by nine of fifteen judges. Four judges (Shwartz, Restrepo, Krause, and Roth) dissented. …

… to me nearly certain that the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case, perhaps in conjunction with the Fifth Circuit domestic civil restraining order automatic disarmament case, U.S. v. Rahimi. As a practical matter, this is a much more important case than Rahimi (which itself is quite important); the federal government is nearly certain to seek review by the Supreme Court; the decision invalidates a federal statute; there is a circuit split; the broad reasoning of the decision is in tension with the Court’s statements that felon disarmament laws are presumptively constitutional. All of these are factors cutting in favor of Supreme Court review, and put together they make such review extremely likely.

[You can bet that Cam Edwards and I will be discussing this case in our VIP Gold chat today. This has major implications for Hunter Biden’s potential firearms charge. I suspect that the Supreme Court will actually follow Heller and McDonald and rule the other way on this, but we’ll likely wait for an answer on it until June 2024. — Ed]