Busted FG wants to get himself a gun

[Mulboyne]

Pittsburgh Post Gazette: Supreme Court to consider whether a felon in Japan is a felon in U.S.

WASHINGTON -- A lawyer for a Westmoreland County man told the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday that his client's conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm should be set aside because the felony conviction that disqualified him from buying a gun took place in a Japanese court.
Several justices reacted sympathetically to the claim by Pittsburgh attorney Paul D. Boas that when Congress outlawed possession of a gun by individuals "convicted in any court" of a serious crime, it had in mind only American courts. Boas' client, former Edgewood police officer Gary Sherwood Small...had answered "no" on a federal form asking if he had ever been convicted "in any court" of a crime punishable by more than a year in prison. In fact, Small had been convicted in 1994 in Okinawa, Japan, of smuggling guns into that country inside a water heater shipped from Pittsburgh, and was sentenced to five years in prison and 18 months of parole.
...Boas suggested that if the United States recognized convictions in Japanese courts, which he said didn't follow American standards of due process, then it might have to recognize foreign convictions for offenses like criticizing a totalitarian government or possessing a Bible in Taliban-era Afghanistan. Boas noted that even Nobel Prize winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who was imprisoned by the Soviet Union, might be unable to buy a gun in America.
[Justice] Scalia replied that Congress might have been more concerned about keeping guns out of the hands of violent foreigners than about allowing former dissidents to own firearms. "It's tough on Solzhenitsyn that he can't buy a gun," Scalia added, "but he'll get over it."

[Kanchou]

Owning a bible or criticisizing a totalitarian government does not equal smuggling guns...

[Mulboyne]

I'd actually like to know whether he was a policeman prior to his Japan conviction or was accepted afterwards. You have to hope it was before.

[Skankster]

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Most important point on this issue:

didn't follow American standards of due process,

[Mulboyne]

Bloomberg: U.S. Felon Gun Possession Ban Limited by High Court
A federal law barring felons from possessing firearms doesn't apply to people whose prior conviction was in a foreign country, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled. The court, voting 5-3, sided with Gary Sherwood Small, who sought to limit the impact of his conviction in Japan on gun- running charges. The decision narrowed a federal law that bars firearm possession by anyone convicted "in any court" of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison. Writing for the high court, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said Congress didn't intend to include convictions in foreign countries, some of which have starkly different standards than American courts. Foreign convictions "would include a conviction from a legal system that is inconsistent with an American understanding of fairness," he wrote. "And they would include a conviction for conduct that domestic law punishes far less severely."
... Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy dissented. Writing for the group, Thomas said Breyer's interpretation was inconsistent with the language of the statute. Thomas also said that many foreign convictions "serve as excellent proxies for dangerousness and culpability."

[dimwit]

Replace the word 'gun' with 'drugs' and wonder if the courts and government would respond the same way.