Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on different sides of this one...POTUS claims it's the greatest SCOTUS of all time.
The irony is that this is good for RKBA, the "conservative bloc"/Congress wanted to extra punish these guys because they used a gun? Good for the win here. Bad guys justly punished, good guys protected. Vague language should always be scrutinized.Justice Neil Gorsuch joined with the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc to deal victory for criminal defendants Monday, striking down a federal law that punishes gun crimes as unconstitutionally vague.
The law at issue authorizes heightened penalties for individuals who use firearms to a commit a “crime of violence.” In dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh warned the decision would undermine public safety.
SNIP
The law at stake Monday was similar to the provision the Court struck down in the 2018 INA case, Gorsuch said. Both decisions followed directly from the 2015 Johnson v. U.S. decision, in which the late Justice Antonin Scalia led the Court in finding that a section of the Armed Career Criminal Act (ACCA) defining “violent felonies” was unlawfully vague.
Kavanaugh, Gorsuch’s fellow Trump appointee, led the conservatives in dissent, saying the provision had been applied in tens of thousands of cases without issue.
“The Court’s decision will thwart Congress’ law enforcement policies, destabilize the criminal justice system, and undermine safety in American communities,” Kavanaugh wrote. His dissent includes a list of past offenders who could now avoid conviction under the heightened penalty law or secure early release. They including one man who used a molotov cocktail to firebomb the Irish Ink Tattoo Shop in Las Cruces, New Mexico and another who used threats of violence to maintain his position in the Annapolis, Maryland sex trade.