Background
The appellant, Moreno Vizcaíno-Peguero, was indicted for violating 18 U.S.C. Section nine hundred twenty-two, subsection G, paragraph five, subsection A, which prohibits aliens illegally or unlawfully in the United States from possessing firearms. He moved to dismiss the indictment on Second Amendment grounds, arguing the statute was unconstitutional as applied to him. The District Court denied the motion, and the appellant pleaded guilty before appealing his conviction.
The court’s reasoning
The court applied the two-step framework from New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. It assumed for the sake of argument that unlawfully present aliens are part of the people protected by the Second Amendment but proceeded to the second step. At this step, the government bore the burden of demonstrating that the regulation is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The court found that historical analogues, including laws disarming Catholics, British Loyalists, and Native Americans, established a tradition of disarming individuals who lacked sufficient allegiance or a regulable relationship to the sovereign. The court concluded that the statute is relevantly similar to these historical measures because it targets a group that exists largely outside the formal system of registration and identification, posing a concern for sovereign control.
What it means going forward
The decision affirms the conviction and reinforces the constitutionality of federal firearm prohibitions against unlawfully present aliens under the Second Amendment, relying on historical traditions of disarming those without allegiance to the sovereign.
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