Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett defended the original meaning of the Second Amendment during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing Tuesday.
She was asked about a dissent that she wrote in the case Kanter v. Barr while sitting on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals where she said a man who was convicted of a nonviolent crime should not lose his Second Amendment rights.
“The original meaning of the Second Amendment … does support the idea that governments are free to keep guns out of the hands of the dangerous,” she said, referencing the mentally ill or others with violent records.
The case she referenced was issued in 2019 and involved a man who was convicted of mail fraud — a nonviolent crime. He had challenged a law preventing him from owning a firearm due to having committed a felony. The two other judges on the panel voted to uphold the law, but Judge Barrett did not.
