Court upholds lifetime gun ban over misdemeanor domestic abuse conviction

By Chris Eger

A federal appellate court on Thursday upheld a ruling that stripped Second Amendment rights from an Ohio man long ago convicted of a misdemeanor domestic violence charge.
The 2-1 panel of the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal by a lower court in the case of Terry Lee Stimmel. The court rejected his argument that, under the law’s “reasonable fit” standard, a limited restriction rather than a continued ban on firearms was more appropriate.
“According to Stimmel, the fit cannot be reasonable where a lone domestic violence misdemeanor conviction is sufficient justification for disarming him, for all practical purposes, for life. We disagree,” Judge Richard Allen Griffin said in an opinion for the majority.
Court documents show that Stimmel in 1997 pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence under Ohio law after an altercation with his then-wife, which left her with a cut to her head. Afterward, a local court sentenced him to 180 days in jail, with all but one day suspended, and a $100 fine.
Yet, he said didn’t learn he was a prohibited buyer under federal law until he tried to buy a gun in 2002. The FBI rejected an appeal of his subsequent NICS

Source: Guns.com