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Amul Thapar Desperately Wants to Be a Trump Supreme Court Justice - Balls and Strikes
Balls and StrikesIn October 2022, Milder Escobar-Temal’s wife called police in Nashville, Tennessee and alleged that he was abusing his 14-year-old stepdaughter. When police responded to the call and searched the home, they found three handguns. Possessing firearms while unlawfully present in the United States is a federal crime, and prosecutors charged Escobar-Temal, a citizen of Guatemala who entered the U.S. without legal authorization in 2012, accordingly.
Escobar-Temal pled guilty last year, but also argued that the law criminalizing gun possession for undocumented immigrants is unconstitutional. The Second Amendment protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” and in 2022, the Supreme Court held that laws regulating that right are “presumptively” unconstitutional, unless there is a sufficiently similar “historical analogue” from the founding era.
That case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, created a high hurdle for gun control legislation, and Escobar-Temal argued the statute didn’t clear it. But on Monday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, finding a “substantial history” of founding-era laws disarming groups of people that were “seen as lacking a regulable relationship to the government”—for example, Quakers who refused to take loyalty oaths, and people who wouldn’t renounce their allegiance to the British Crown.
Joined by Judge Stephanie Davis, Judge Kathy Stranch acknowledged that many early American gun restrictions “reflected a worldview suspicious and disdainful of anyone who was not white, male, and landowning.” But the Supreme Court stuck judges with a historical standard, so she tried to make it work. “It is our job to separate the important underlying principles of the relationship between governmental interests and individuals’ right to bear arms from the troublesome applications of those principles employed by the Founders,” she said.
Escobar-Temal pled guilty last year, but also argued that the law criminalizing gun possession for undocumented immigrants is unconstitutional. The Second Amendment protects “the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” and in 2022, the Supreme Court held that laws regulating that right are “presumptively” unconstitutional, unless there is a sufficiently similar “historical analogue” from the founding era.
That case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, created a high hurdle for gun control legislation, and Escobar-Temal argued the statute didn’t clear it. But on Monday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, finding a “substantial history” of founding-era laws disarming groups of people that were “seen as lacking a regulable relationship to the government”—for example, Quakers who refused to take loyalty oaths, and people who wouldn’t renounce their allegiance to the British Crown.
Joined by Judge Stephanie Davis, Judge Kathy Stranch acknowledged that many early American gun restrictions “reflected a worldview suspicious and disdainful of anyone who was not white, male, and landowning.” But the Supreme Court stuck judges with a historical standard, so she tried to make it work. “It is our job to separate the important underlying principles of the relationship between governmental interests and individuals’ right to bear arms from the troublesome applications of those principles employed by the Founders,” she said.
James Ho might be the favorite to be Trump's next Supreme Court nominee, but Amul Thapar is at least going to give him a run for his money
— Balls & Strikes (@ballsandstrikes.org) 2026-01-05T19:26:01.425Z