A federal court ruling upholding gun rights for people who had a past mental illness is being closely watched as a potential Supreme Court test case.
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled in Tyler v. Hillsdale County Sheriff’s Department that a “strict scrutiny” test should be applied to a gun ownership case, potentially invalidating a federal law that restricts gun ownership by someone “adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution”
According to court documents, Clifford Tyler, now 73, was committed to a Michigan mental institution for about a month in 1985 after suffering issues after a divorce. After he was released and returned to work, Tyler had no other instances of being committed.
Tyler applied a gun permit in 2011, but he was denied under a federal law that excludes ownership for people with any past history of mental illness unless they fall into a category of exception.
However, Tyler wasn’t eligible for a federal-state program that gives some people an exception, because Michigan doesn’t take part in it. Tyler also didn’t qualify for a federally based program, because Congress has refused to fund the program since 1992 and it doesn’t pay government workers to review applications for people like Tyler.
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