Under current federal law, anybody convicted of a felony-level offense or a domestic violence misdemeanor is automatically barred from owning firearms. What the Bloomberg editorial board is seeking is a further erosion of the standards to disqualify someone from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights.Most states don’t prohibit alcohol abusers or those convicted of alcohol-related misdemeanors from purchasing or possessing firearms. Even in states with alcohol provisions, definitions of what constitutes “alcohol abuse” are often too vague to be effective. Pennsylvania’s law is one of the clearest. It’s hardly draconian, banning firearm transfers to anyone convicted of three or more alcohol-related driving violations in five years. The District of Columbia prohibits firearm sales to anyone convicted of two or more alcohol-and-driving violations, also within five years.
In Virginia, if the Bloomberg crowd had its way, residents could lose their right to keep and bear arms if they were convicted or pleaded guilty to public intoxication, purchasing liquor from an unlicensed seller, and a host of other misdemeanor crimes. That’s quite all right with the Bloomberg editors, because they view this prohibition as a sort of pre-crime intervention.
