More 10th Circuit Heller Jurisprudence

In United States v. Gieswein (No. 08-6113) the Tenth Circuit held again that the federal felon dispossession statute (18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)) was not unconstitutional under Heller.  The defendant in Gieswin had prior felony convictions for, among other things, placing a pipe bomb in a parked car.  Applying United States v. McCane, the court held that § 922 violates neither the Second Amendment or the Commerce Clause.  The court noted that the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth and Eleventh Circuits had all also rejected post-Helller Second Amendment challenges to § 922.  Notably, the court included a footnote indicating that it shared “the concern, expressed in the McCane concurrence [by Judge Tymkovich], that the Heller dictum [regarding the constitutionality of dispossession laws] may be in tension with the basis for its own holding, as felon dispossession laws may not have the longstanding historical basis ascribed to them by the Court.”