The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just ruled that banning all felons from being able to own guns is actually unconstitutional.

This ruling, it now flings the door wide open for potentially upwards of 20 million people to try and restore their right to keep them their arms.

Although it is worth mentioning that there is a lot of nuance to this particular story, and so let's go through it together.

To start with one of the quirks of the American judicial system is that sometimes the rights are enumerated in the US Constitution are seen as inviolable, sacred rights that are afforded to all US citizens.

However, at other times, those same rights are treated more as privileges,

things that the government can take away from you

if, according to them, you don't behave properly.

I mean, at the very extreme end,

the government can take your life if you commit a capital offense or if you try to move your family to a cabin over in Idaho

However getting back to the topic of today's discussion the second amendment to the US Constitution says, and I quote,

the right of the people to keep them bear arms shall not be infringed.

That is very straightforward. However, for anyone convicted of a felony or for anyone sentenced to over a year in prison, they've actually been stripped away

of their Second Amendment privileges, regardless of whether the crime they committed was violent

or nonviolent.

Which brings us neatly along to the case of Mr Stephen Duarte.

You see, Mr Duarte was previously a convicted criminal having five prior nonviolent criminal

convictions on his record, with each one of those being punishable by over a year in prison.

The crimes, they included things like vandalism, possession of a controlled substance, evading police,

and so on.

And Mr Duarte had already served out his prison time.

But the fact that his crimes were nonviolent doesn't really matter.

Because according to the letter of the law,

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