Former President Donald Trump is in hot water, and this time it’s not because of some claim of a campaign finance violation. Oh no, he’s in serious hot water regarding allegations he mishandled classified documents and kept them at his Mar-A-Lago home.
He’s been indicted on dozens of felony charges.
You might have heard something about this, assuming you’ve been converting oxygen into carbon dioxide lately.
There’s been a lot of talk about how this will impact his presidential campaign, but what struck me as funny is what happens if he’s convicted.
If that were to happen, he would be a convicted felon. That would potentially hurt his chance at winning in 2024, but there’s no legal barrier to him running as a felon. The only “barrier” is whether or not the American people will vote for someone with a felony conviction.
So, Donald Trump can be a felon and the President of the United States of America.
He can have access to the nuclear launch codes and order our armed forces to launch an attack on our nation’s enemies.
But he couldn’t lawfully own a single firearm.
That’s right. He could ultimately command the combined might of the United States Armed Forces, but not command a Glock of his very own.
Sure, there are ways he could make that happen–as president, he could pardon himself, for example–but there’s a certain irony here.
Trump wouldn’t be precluded from seeking office and the only reason for it to matter in his election is whether voters care about it or not. There was no mechanism put into the Constitution to keep a convicted felon from running for federal office. Nothing at all.
Yet we routinely bar non-violent felons from owning firearms, denying them a right arguably less impactful on people’s lives than, oh, I don’t know…running the country, maybe?
It’s bad enough to decide some people are too dangerous to have all of their rights despite being free from prison, but it’s quite another to figure that those rights are more dangerous for any felon to access than running for president.
Truthfully, this has never really been an issue before now, and we’ll have to see how Trump’s trial proceeds and whether or not it becomes an issue afterward. Even then, Trump would still need to get elected, which remains to be seen.
It’s well past time that we stop treating all felons as if they’re created equal. Someone on the hook for mail fraud isn’t likely to take up robbing liquor stores as a hobby after they complete their sentence. There’s no reason to deny them their Second Amendment rights.
Especially if that same person can get into politics and work their way into the presidency where they could basically start a war.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t get past the absolute stupidity here.
Our system, especially our approach to the Second Amendment, seriously needs to change. Trump’s indictment didn’t spur this thinking on, but it’s a prime example of just how stupid it really is.
