No one should try to pass bad checks, but I think a lot of us have. It’s not that most are trying to get one over on anyone; it’s that they’re trying to buy a little bit of time. They’ll write a check and think that their paycheck will be in their accounts before the check clears.
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That doesn’t always happen.
Regardless, though, while writing a bad check above a certain amount is a felony, these aren’t dangerous felons, and these folks are also unlikely to commit any other crimes in their lives, much less a violent one.
As Cam covered the other day, one woman who got that felony now wants her gun rights back. Melynda Vincent has Second Amendment groups in her corner, and Reason is now highlighting her plea to the Supreme Court as well.
Seventeen years ago, Melynda Vincent was convicted of bank fraud because she paid for groceries with a bad check for $498. Although bank fraud can be punished by up to 30 years in prison under federal law, Vincent was sentenced to probation, which she successfully completed before earning three university degrees and launching a career as a social worker. In 2016, she founded the Utah Harm Reduction Coalition, which aims to “provide evidence-based interventions to aid people in reducing health and social harms associated with substance use.”
Vincent, in short, has been law-abiding and productive for many years. But because her 2008 conviction involved a crime punishable by more than a year of incarceration, she permanently lost her Second Amendment rights under 18 USC 922(g)(1). That means she is not legally allowed to own a gun for self-defense or even possess one while hunting with her children. Those burdens, Vincent’s lawyers argue in a Supreme Court petition, are unconstitutional as well as unjust. They say the case, Vincent v. Bondi, provides “an ideal vehicle” for resolving a circuit split on the question of whether the Second Amendment allows the government to disarm people based on nothing more than a nonviolent criminal conviction.
Section 922(g)(1) applies to millions of Americans with no history of violence. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, about 19 million Americans have felony records. In FY 2023, the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports, just 4.4 percent of federal felony convictions involved violent crimes. Older BJS data indicate that less than a fifth of state felony convictions involve violent offenses. Those numbers, Vincent’s petition says, suggest that “over eighty percent of state offenders and over ninety-five percent of federal offenders have improperly lost their right to self-defense” because of Section 922(g)(1).
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A lot of times, the cases we have that challenge particular laws involve some unsavory people. Rahimi, for example, involved someone who seemed like the kind of person I pray my daughter stays far, far away from throughout the rest of her life.
But Vincent isn’t.
It sounds like she floated a check because she needed groceries and didn’t have the money at the time. I get it. It’s kind of hard not to risk it when you need food in the fridge. I’m not excusing it, mind you, but I understand it. I’ve even done it a time or two because I felt like I was desperate. Luckily, I was never as unlucky as she was.
Still, my late mother wasn’t. She got arrested for the exact same charge for the exact same reason. The wife of a cop got arrested for a felony because money was tight.
Mom wasn’t a danger to anyone except me if she found my stash of dirty magazines, and even then, she wasn’t one to cross the line from discipline to child abuse or anything else. It’s kind of hard not to think of her when I think of Vincent because of this.
Yet that’s not fair to Vincent. Not entirely.
See, my mother was great, but Vincent has stepped up and done more than become a good, taxpaying citizen. It’s clear she’s dedicated to making her community so much better and has done so much to accomplish that. And understand, my mom was no slouch in that department either. Vincent just took it to a different level.
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She’s clearly someone who poses no danger to anyone.
There’s no reason she should be denied her Second Amendment rights. And, as noted, she’s actually a sympathetic figure, unlike so many others in Second Amendment cases.
Folks, I’m going to lay it out straight for you.
Non-violent felons shouldn’t indefinitely lose their right to keep and bear arms. I don’t even think they should lose them at all, but I get that not everyone is going to agree with me. Fine. Let them lose them for a period of time and have them automatically reinstated if they keep their nose clean. I can live with that, though I don’t like it.
But the current system keeps someone like Vincent disarmed for no good reason. That’s not just a problem for her, but for all of us, because her disarmament is used to justify additional disarmament efforts. We’ve seen it time and time again, and we will continue to see it.
Let’s end this stupidity once and for all.
