SUPREME COURT REWRITES LAUTENBURG AMENDMENTIN DECIDING UNITED STATES V. HAYES February 24, 2009Springfield, Virginia. On February 24, 2009, by a vote of 7 to 2, theUnited States Supreme Court handed the notorious anti-gun New JerseySenator Frank Lautenburg (D-NJ) a victory in his war against gunowners, in the case of United States v. Randy Edward Hayes.Larry Pratt, Executive Vice President of Gun Owners Foundation,commented: "Here we had a case of pure statutory construction.Sadly, Justice Ginsburg creatively reshuffled the words of thestatute to interpret it in the way Senator Lautenberg wanted it to beread. The Second Amendment was not an issue in this case, as it wasnot a constitutional challenge under Heller. Nevertheless, we aredisappointed in the majority's ruling." In agreement with an amicus curiae brief filed on behalf of GunOwners Foundation (GOF), and in dissent from this ruling, ChiefJustice Roberts and Justice Scalia accused the majority of havingwritten an opinion "restructuring the statute and adding words"to the law that prohibits any person convicted of a misdemeanor crimeof domestic violence from owning or otherwise possessing a firearm.According to the Court majority's revised version of the statute, aperson loses his right to have a firearm if he is convicted of asimple assault or battery if there is information in a police report(or some other nonjudicial record) indicating that the victim was insome way "domestically" related to the convicted person. In otherwords, a person could lose his firearm rights solely on the basis ofthe unsubstantiated accusation of the victim or even a neighbor.As Chief Justice Roberts observed, "the majority's approach willentail significant problems in application": "it will often benecessary to go beyond the fact of conviction and 'engage in anelaborate factfinding process regarding the defendant's prioroffens....'"The GOF amicus brief spelled out in some detail those practicalproblems, including the unreasonable risk that a prospective gunbuyer may be accused of filing a false statement on the ATF 4473 Formin which he must swear that he has not been convicted of a misdemeanorcrime of domestic violence and the inherent unreliability ofinformation contained in police reports of emotionally-chargedincidents that lead to assault accusations.But these warnings fell on a deaf-eared majority. Instead of holdingthe government to a strict interpretation of the statutory language,the majority preferred to rely upon the single voice of SenatorLautenburg who, as sponsor of the new law, delivered a self-servingspeech on the Senate floor about statutory language inserted in the"last-minute" by Senate and House conferees behind closed doorsthat even the majority found to be "awkward."Even more significant, the majority justified its strainedconstruction of the statute in order to meet the gun-control policygoals of Senator Lautenburg. Thus, it ruled that it would be worth itto increase the risk that an innocent person would be denied the rightto purchase a firearm, in order to decrease the risk that a"guilty" person might escape undetected by the instant criminalbackground check.Gun Owners Foundation is the litigating sister-organization of GunOwners of America, Inc.