Selim Zherka, aka Sam v. Pamela Bondi

New York City, New York civil rights lawyer represented the Plaintiff claiming that his Second Amendment rights were violated.



Appellant, who was convicted of a nonviolent financial felony, brings a Second Amendment and Fifth Amendment challenge to the felon-in-possession law, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which prohibits convicted felons from possessing firearms. He argues that because he was convicted only of a nonviolent financial felony, Congress cannot deprive him of his right to bear arms. He further asserts that because he has a constitutional right to bear arms, he also has a due process right to an individual assessment of dangerousness before the government can deprive him of his Second Amendment rights.



On December 22, 2015, Zherka pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to make a false statement to a bank and to sign and file a false federal income tax return in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371.2 Although Zherka's offense conduct was

nonviolent, his crime was serious; he defrauded federally insured banks of tens of millions of dollars and flouted the tax laws of this country to the tune of over one million dollars in tax loss. Zherka was sentenced to 37 months' imprisonment and three years of supervised release, and ordered to pay approximately $8.5 million in fines, restitution, and forfeiture. As a condition of his supervised release, he was prohibited from possessing a firearm.

Dismissed.



Affirmed



The Supreme Court has never repudiated Heller’s assurance that “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons” are “presumptively lawful.” 554 U.S. at 626–27, 627 n.26.7 Second, the Court has struck down only firearms laws that overly restrict the rights of “law-abiding,

responsible citizens” to own and possess guns. Id. at 635; see also McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 749–50 (2010); Bruen, 597 U.S. at 8–11, 15, 26, 29. Rahimi is the only instance in which the Court has reviewed a law that criminalizes firearms possession by potentially dangerous individuals, and there, the Court upheld the constitutionality of Section 922(g)(8) both facially and as applied. See 602 U.S. at 690. And third, the historical analogues that could support a tradition of firearm regulation do not have to be “dead ringer[s]” for the challenged regulation,

especially when the challenged regulation addresses new circumstances. Id. at 692 (internal quotation marks omitted).