In my column this week, I note that the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was hailed as victory for "common sense" gun control when it was approved last month, increased the penalties for illegal possession of firearms. The law raised the maximum sentence for people with felony records from 10 to 15 years and created a new "trafficking in firearms" offense, also punishable by up to 15 years in prison, that is defined broadly enough to include receipt of a firearm by someone who is legally disqualified from owning one. Those provisions affect millions of "prohibited persons" with no history of violence, including cannabis consumers, former psychiatric patients, and people convicted of drug crimes or other nonviolent felonies.
It gets worse. Patricia Richman, national sentencing resource counsel at Federal Public & Community Defenders, notes that the "trafficking in firearms" provision applies to anyone who obtains a gun when he "knows or has reasonable cause to believe that such receipt would constitute a felony." It therefore covers prohibited persons as defined by state as well as federal law—a significant expansion, since state criteria for gun ownership are often stricter than federal criteria. That provision, Richman notes in an email, "pull[s] in all state felony prohibitions on firearm possession."
