Federal judges spout anti-gun views from the bench

A federal judge this month declared having guns “an invitation to get into trouble,” drawing fierce denunciations from Second Amendment groups that said his words were a shocking instance of ignorance, if not an anti-gun bias.

Judge James Robart made his remark while sentencing a repeat felon to 54 months in prison for possessing a firearm. After the man, Kenan Dejuan Brown, told the judge he “felt safe” with a gun, Judge Robart countered.

“In my experience a gun is an invitation to get into trouble,” he said.

He’s the second federal judge in less than a month to express derision for firearms.

During a hearing on President Trump’s surge of federal agents to Washington to deal with crime, Judge Ana Reyes talked up a hypothetical putting herself in the role of chief of police, then quickly averred it would never happen: “I freak out around guns,” the Biden appointee said.

“These comments are bizarre,” said Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law. “Far too many judges say what is on their minds. And they truly hate guns.”

In Judge Reyes’s case, the remarks seemed to be a complete non sequitur.

But for Judge Robart, a George W. Bush appointee to the U.S. district court in Seattle, guns were central to the case.

Brown, 42, already had a lengthy record of felonies, including illegal gun possession convictions, when authorities responding to a car crash in 2023 found him injured behind the wheel and spotted a pistol poking out of his jacket pocket.

The Glock 19 had a round chambered and 21 more rounds in an extended magazine.

Brown’s lawyers asked for a four-year sentence. Federal prosecutors wanted five years.

Judge Robert split the difference at four-and-a-half years, and the admonition to forgo the guns, which the U.S. Justice Department found striking enough to include in its press release announcing the sentencing.

Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Washington-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, said Judge Robart was right to slap the stiff sentence on Brown — but wrong to label guns as “trouble.”

He characterized the judge’s remark as an unfortunate “misstatement.”

“Sorry, your honor,” Mr. Gottlieb said, “but for millions of honest citizens, having a gun in an emergency has gotten them out of trouble and prevented tragedies.”

He said that, seen another way, Brown’s case is “a textbook example of the failure of gun control laws.”

He said Brown seems to have had no trouble obtaining firearms throughout his criminal career, despite Washington’s strict laws. Everytown for Gun Safety, a control group, ranks the state in the top 10 nationally for its restrictions.

“Brown had previous convictions for illegal gun possession, and here he was again, armed with a gun that Ferguson and others said their restrictive laws would prevent him from having,” Mr. Gottlieb said.

Brown’s public defender lawyers didn’t respond to an inquiry for this story, and it’s not clear whether they are contemplating an appeal of the sentencing.

One legal expert said the judges’ comments could be likened to judges saying abortion made them “freak out.”

Mr. Blackman suggested another analogy, likening Judge Robart’s comment to a judge to made statements from the bench skeptical of vaccines or climate change science.

Mr. Blackman previously took part in a groundbreaking set of cases involving the right to publish plans for 3D-printed firearms.

He had successfully defeated three temporary restraining orders over the course of four days before running into Judge Robert Lasnik, a Clinton appointee and colleague of Judge Robart in Seattle. Judge Lasnik issued a restraining order upending the deal Mr. Blackman’s client had struck with the federal government to allow for the plans to be posted online.

In a law review article in 2020, Mr. Blackman said he was “shocked” by Judge Lasnik’s dismissive treatment of his client, Cody Wilson, and the First Amendment implications of shutting down his website.

One federal jurist has criticized his colleagues for their lack of firearms knowledge.

Judge Lawrence VanDyke, a Trump appointee to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in a dissent earlier this year chiding his colleagues for approving California’s ban on large-capacity magazines, said, “Many judges (and gun-banning governments) know next to nothing about how guns actually work.”

He said that’s why they upheld a law that, to him, was nonsensical in its drafting.

Judge VanDyke even filmed what the court labeled a “dissent video” to go along with his opinion, where he assembled and disassembled several guns to make his point.

“Like many of this court’s ideas about the Second Amendment, it stems from a basic misunderstanding of how firearms work,” he said.

He said he rendered the weapons inoperable for safety before he filmed.

While Judge VanDyke sought to bring the Second Amendment into his court, a local judge in New York City last year tried to boot it out.

Judge Abena Darkeh made headlines after she told a defendant that part of the U.S. Constitution wasn’t operative in her courtroom.

“Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So, you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York,” she said.

A year later, another New York City judge faced heat after bringing his own gun to court to make a point during a hearing this summer.

Judge Jeffrey Gershuny was skeptical of a police officer testifying that he’d identified a gun in a suspect’s bag. The judge brought a similar bag and his own gun into the courtroom to try to prod the officer on how he reached his conclusions, according to The New York Post.