One Judge Backed Gun Control in a Ruling That Could Change Everything

By: Anthony Morelli

A rogue judge in New York has made a catastrophic ruling.

He attacked gun owners and made some extremely offensive statements.

And then he put forward a ruling that could destroy the Second Amendment.

In the 1700s, before the Constitution was ratified or the United States even existed, there was a law saying that Catholics could not own guns.

Of course, most people now who heard about such a law would find it to be extreme and inappropriate, even if it didn’t apply to them.

But Judge Frank P. Geraci of New York had a different view. Not only did he apparently think that was a good law, but he actually used it to justify New York’s modern gun control regime.

The fact that he drew an analogy between those two laws would lead most people to believe that the New York law was unconstitutional.

Unfortunately for gun owners in New York, however, Judge Geraci put forward a ruling in support of New York’s background check laws and cited the 18^th century law to back up his claim.

Clearly Geraci has no regard for either the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, or the First Amendment, which protects religious freedom.

As Bearing Arms reports, “A federal judge in New York has dismissed a challenge to the state’s requirement that every ammunition sale go through a background check, citing a colonial Virginia statute barring Catholics from owning or possessing arms that he says demonstrates a ‘national tradition’ of keeping guns from dangerous people.

“In his ruling, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Frank P. Geraci, Jr agreed that ammunition should be considered ‘arms’ that are protected by the language of the Second Amendment, but still found the law in question to be constitutional because it’s meant to keep ‘dangerous’ people from acquiring guns and ammunition.”

Not only does Geraci apparently think Catholics are dangerous – an odd thing for someone who is apparently of Italian heritage to say – but he also thinks gun owners are similarly dangerous.

Here is what he said in his ruling: “The government offers several historical examples of laws that were enacted to disarm dangerous individuals, but the Court will discuss only one of the many analogues offered. In colonial Virginia, the legislature dictated that no Catholics ‘shall, or may have, or keep in his house or elsewhere, or in the possession of any other person to his use, or at his disposition, any arms, weapons, gunpowder or ammunition’ because it was determined that ‘it is dangerous at this time to permit [Catholics] to be armed.’”

This is the type of law that would never pass constitutional muster in today’s United States. It existed in colonial times before the First Amendment even existed.

But Geraci seems to think we should bring back laws like that, and now he is using it as justification to crack down on gun owners.

The gun rights community can only hope that a higher court has the sense to reverse Geraci’s outrageous ruling and restore Second Amendment rights in New York.