UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. CHARLES SNEAD, Defendant.
Criminal No.: 1:22-cr-033
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA ABINGDON DIVISION
October 28, 2022
Michael F. Urbanski, Chief United States District Judge
Case 1:22-cr-00033-MFU-PMS Document 50 Filed 10/28/22 Pageid#: 182
This matter is before the court on defendant Charles Snead‘s (“Snead“) motion to dismiss Count III of the Indictment as Unconstitutional. ECF No. 32. The indictment, ECF No. 24, charges Snead with (1) knowingly conspiring with others to possess with the intent to distribute 50 grams of methamphetamine, its salts, isomers, and salts of its isomers in violation of
Bruen, and the cases it follows, are focused on protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, and, as such, do not invalidate laws prohibiting criminal cоnduct, such as the one at issue here, which prohibits possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. In short, the Second Amendment does not guarantee a person the right to use or carry a firearm while engaged in criminal activity. As further explained in this opinion, Snead‘s motion to dismiss Count III is DENIED.
I.
A criminal complaint was filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia on July 21, 2022. ECF No. 1. In that complaint, Special Agent Brian Snedeker averred that Snead violated (1)
Snead was detained and read his Miranda rights later that day. He admitted to law enforcement that he had distributed methamphetamine and possessed roughly a quarter pound of methamphetamine and a handgun at his residence. Id. at 3.
On August 16, 2022, a Grand Jury returned a three-count indictment аgainst Snead. ECF No. 24. The indictment included violations of
II.
Under
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution provides “[a] well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
In Bruen, the Supreme Court explained that “[w]hen the Second Amendment‘s plain text covers an individual‘s conduct, the Constitution presumрtively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation‘s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” 142 S. Ct. at 2129-30. Only after the government makes that showing “may a court conclude that the individual‘s conduct
Snead‘s challenge fails because the text оf the Second Amendment does not cover the criminal use of firearms. As such, the conduct made unlawful by
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 630 (2008), the Court stated that “[w]e described the right protected by the Second Amendment as bearing arms for a lawful purpose.” Focusing on the “core lawful purpose of self-defense,” id. at 630, Heller teaches that “the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Id. at 625. The Court explained that “[l]ike most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited,” id. at 626, and that “the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoevеr in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Id. Importantly, the Court stated:
Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.
Id. at 626-27. In an accompanying footnote, the Court stated that “[w]e identify these presumptivеly lawful regulatory measures only as examples; our list does not purport to be exhaustive.”1 Id. at 627 n.26. In short, Heller makes clear that the Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, and provides no support for Snead‘s argument that the Second Amendmеnt precludes legislatures from enacting laws prohibiting the illegal use of firearms.
McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 780 (2010), decided two years later, reiterated the “central holding in Heller: that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defensе within the home.” The Court again noted the scope of its decision:
It is important to keep in mind that Heller, while striking down a law that prohibited the possession of handguns in the home, recognized that the right to keep and bear arms is not “a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever and for whatever purpоse.” We made it clear in Heller that our holding did not cast doubt on such longstanding regulatory measures as “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill,” “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws on the commercial sаle of arms.” We repeat those assurances here.
Id. at 786 (internal citations omitted).
[W]e hold that the Second Amendment does not protect the unlawful purpose of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime and that
18 U.S.C. § 924(c) as applied in this case does not violate the Second Amendment. . . . [O]nce [the defendant] engaged in an illegal home business, he was no longer a law-abiding citizen using the firearm for a lawful purpose, and his conviction fоr possession of a firearm under these circumstances does not burden his Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Id. (internal quotations and citations omitted). In United States v. Napolitan, 762 F.3d 297, 311 (3rd Cir. 2014), the Third Circuit agreed: “Needless to say, while the Second Amendment secures ‘the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home,’ District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 635 (2008), it does not entitle a drug trafficker to carry a firearm in furtherance of his criminal exploits. . . .” In an unpublished opinion decided prior to Heller, the Fourth Circuit reached the same conclusion:
In his third challenge to his conviction, Farmer claims that
§ 924(c) is unconstitutional because it violates the Second Amendment of the Constitution. Section 924(c) does not prohibit people from keeping and bearing firearms; rather it criminalizes the use of a firearm during a drug offense. Consequently, it does not run afoul of the constitutional provisions in the Second Amendment; this claim is meritless.
United States v. Farmer, 1 F.3d 1234 (table), 1993 WL 310285, at *1 (4th Cir. Aug. 17, 1993).
The Supreme Court‘s recent decision in Bruen does not breathe life into Snead‘s argument. In fact, the Court expressly stated that Bruen was “consistent with Heller and McDonald.” 142 S. Ct at 2162. As in Heller and McDonald, the issue in Bruen concerned “how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen‘s right to armed self-defense.” Id. at 2133. The Court noted that it was undisputed that the petitioners were “two ordinary law-abiding, adult citizens” who are “part of ‘the peоple’ whom the Second Amendment protects.” Id. at 2134. In the first paragraph of the Bruen opinion, the Court framed the issue as follows:
In District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and McDonald v. Chicago, 561 U.S. 742 (2010), we recognized that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments
protect the right of an ordinary, law-abiding citizen to posses a handgun in the home for self-defense. In this case, petitioners and respondents agree that ordinary, law-abiding citizens have a similar right to carry handguns publicly for self-defense. We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual‘s right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home.
In the concluding paragraph of the majority opinion, the Court repeated that the right to bear and keep arms belonged to “law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs.” Id. at 2156. Nothing in the text of Bruen suggests that the Second Amendment protects the use of a firearm in the commission of a crime. This conclusion is confirmed by the concurring opinion of Justice Kavanaugh, joined in by Chief Justice Roberts. The concurrеnce echoes Heller‘s and McDonald‘s assurances that “[n]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” 142 S. Ct. at 2162 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring).
Following this summer‘s decision in Bruen, a number of district courts have addressed challenges to federal criminal firearms statutes. In the majority of those cases, the courts have rejected those challenges. For example, in United States v. Ingram, No. CR 0:18-557-MGL-3, 2022 WL 3691350 (D. S.C. Aug. 25, 2022), the South Carolina District Court recently considered a challenge to both
To recap, similar discussion regarding felon-in-possession and comparable statutes appears in three different opinions: Heller, McDonald, and Bruen. By distinguishing non-law-abiding citizens from law-abiding ones, the dicta in Heller and McDonald clarifies the bounds of the plain text of the Second Amendment. This, coupled with the majority‘s focus in Bruen on the Second Amendment rights of “law-abiding citizens” throughout the opinion convinces this Court that the Supreme Court would conclude that these statutes fail to infringe on any Second Amendment rights.
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And, although the Supreme Court cases explained above fail to explicitly mention Section 924(c), the rationale also applies to that statute in equal or greater measure. Heller and its progeny emphasize that the enumerated list “presumptively lawful” regulatory measures is inexhaustive. Heller, 554 U.S. at 627 n.26. Therefore, because it prohibits the use of firearms by non-law-abiding citizens for unlawful purposes, such conduct is also unprotected by the Second Amendment.
Ingram, 2022 WL 3691350, at *3.2
Snead‘s argument ignores the significant difference between the Supreme Court‘s
This conclusion is consistent with other cases decided by federal district courts around the country following Bruen. See United States v. Nutter, No. 2:21-CR-00142, 2022 WL 3718518 (S.D. W.Va. Aug. 29, 2022) (addressing
Against this backdrop, Snead‘s citation of United States v. Quiroz, 4:22-CR-00104-DC, ECF No. 82 (W.D. Tex. September 19, 2022) stands alone. Quiroz does not suggest a contrary result for two reasons. First, Quiroz did not concern
III.
In sum, the Second Amendment does not protect the criminal use of firearms.
An appropriate Order will be entered.
Entered: October 28, 2022
Michael F. Urbanski
Chief United States District Judge