NBA YoungBoy Claims His Gun Prices Are Unconstitutional Forward Of Trial

NBA YoungBoy’s attorneys filed a movement to dismiss his federal gun prices on February 2. Based on court docket paperwork obtained by AllHipHop, his attorneys argued the fees had been unconstitutional.

The Motown Data artist, whose actual title is Kentrell Gaulden, was indicted for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and illegal possession of an unregistered firearm in 2021. NBA YoungBoy’s attorneys claimed the fees, which stemmed from his 2020 arrest in Baton Rouge, violated his Second Modification rights.

“The federal government has not alleged that Mr. Gaulden was noticed to be holding a firearm by any regulation enforcement officer (or another witness), nor have any allegations been made that Mr. Gaulden was utilizing a firearm in any illegal approach on the time of his alleged offense,” NBA YoungBoy’s authorized crew wrote. “Reasonably, the federal government merely alleges that music video footage exhibits Mr. Gaulden possessing a firearm after being convicted of a felony and for possessing a firearm which isn’t registered within the nationwide firearms registration and switch document.”

They continued, “The federal government doesn’t allege that Mr. Gaulden was posing a risk to anybody and can’t even allege that the suspected firearms noticed within the video had been useful or loaded when the video was recorded. This prosecution seeks to limit and deny Mr. Gaulden’s Second Modification proper to own a firearm based mostly solely on his standing [as] a felon and his alleged failure to adjust to bureaucratic laws requiring the registration of firearms right into a nationwide database.”

NBA YoungBoy’s attorneys stated his alleged possession of a firearm in a public space was protected by the Second Modification. They disputed the legality of banning convicted felons from possessing weapons.

“Students and courts alike have beforehand acknowledged the shortage of a transparent historic continuity between the firearm legal guidelines in impact when the Second Modification was ratified and the fashionable lifetime ban on possessing firearms for anybody convicted of against the law punishable by imprisonment for time period exceeding one yr which is presently in impact,” the attorneys wrote. “The Fifth Circuit has acknowledged that ‘the federal felony firearm possession ban bears little resemblance to legal guidelines in impact on the time the Second Modification was ratified, because it was not enacted till 1938, was not expanded to cowl non-violent felonies till 1961 and was not re-focused from receipt to possession till 1968’ … In different phrases, the blanket lifetime ban on the possession of firearms by each particular person convicted of against the law for which they may have been sentenced to a time period exceeding one yr didn’t exist till 1968.”

The attorneys pushed again towards felony-based disarmament, calling it a “Twentieth-century invention.” They contended the federal government “can not present the historic analogues to point out that felony disarmament comports” with the custom of firearm regulation within the U.S.

NBA YoungBoy stays on home arrest awaiting trial in his federal gun case. The 24-year-old rapper’s trial is scheduled to start in July if Choose Shelly Dick rejects his request to dismiss the fees.