New report details that persons with felony records have brought most gun litigation after Bruen changed Second Amendment law

In my very first post after reporting on the Supreme Court's 2022 landmark Second Amendment case, Bruen, I wondered on this blog "Are all broad felon-in-possession criminal gun statutes now constitutionally suspect after Bruen?".  Two years later with lots and lots of lower court litigation and the follow-up SCOTUS case of Rahimi, it seems quite clear now the answer is "yes," felon-in-possession criminal gun prohibitions are "constitutional suspect," but the answer as to exactly whether and when they may be unconstitutional remains quite unclear.  The latest data point for these discussion comes from this new article from The Trace, fully headlined "More Than a Thousand Felons Have Challenged Their Gun Bans Since the Supreme Court’s Bruen Decision: The Trace reviewed more than 2,000 court cases that cited Bruen and found that no group has used the decision more often than people whose felony records bar them from possessing guns."  And here are some excerpts:

Bruen set off a wave of legal challenges to gun restrictions across the country, but no other group has taken to the courts as frequently as people with felony convictions, who are prohibited from possessing guns under a federal statute known as the felon gun ban.

The Trace reviewed more than 2,000 federal court decisions that cited Bruen over the past two years. More than 1,600 of them answered challenges to a wide variety of federal, state, and local gun laws — from assault weapons restrictions to bans on guns at the U.S. Post Office. The majority — some 1,100 — of the decisions included a challenge to the felon gun ban, making it the single most frequently contested statute by far.

At least 30 of the challenges to the felon gun ban have succeeded. While that ratio may seem small, it marks a stark departure from the past, when effectively none succeeded, and it shows that Bruen has cracked the longstanding consensus that people convicted of serious crimes may constitutionally be barred from gun ownership. 

Those decisions, albeit rare and frequently narrow, chart new legal pathways for other defendants and judges to follow, meaning that more people convicted of felonies could have their cases thrown out.  Over the past two years, judges have issued on average two Bruen-related rulings each working day, the majority of which have been on challenges to the felon gun ban. And the pace is increasing....

The sheer volume of Bruen challenges to the felon gun ban has the potential to gum up the legal system. Margaret Groban, a former federal prosecutor who focused on gun crimes and domestic violence cases, described the fallout as “a mess.”   “It does take up a lot of resources,” she said. “There are cases to prosecute, and then you spend all your time defending the cases that have already been prosecuted.”...

A felon in possession of a firearm is one of the most commonly charged federal crimes, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. In 2022 and 2023, more than 7,000 people with felony records were convicted of this crime — in the federal court system alone.  The majority of these defendants were Black....

“I represent a lot of kids who have never in their lives even fired a gun,” said Christopher Smith, a public defender in the Bronx. “But it’s a dangerous neighborhood.” His clients, he added, would rather be tried for carrying an illegal gun than killed for not having one to defend themselves. Bruen has shifted the legal strategy in gun possession cases, particularly for clients who had prior felony convictions, Smith said. “The biggest change is now we just write a different motion in gun cases, where we challenge on Second Amendment grounds.”