CHEYENNE — Arguments are scheduled next month in a case in which Wyoming is seeking a federal court ruling affirming its authority to help some people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence regain their right to own a firearm.
Federal law prohibits people with such convictions from owning guns.
U.S. District Judge Alan Johnson is scheduled to hear arguments in the case Oct. 6 in Cheyenne.
The state alleges that the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives acted illegally when it threatened to disallow about 11,000 concealed weapons permits the state issued as a substitute for federal background checks for firearms purchases.
The federal agency threatened to take that step unless the state repealed a 2004 law that allows people to expunge a first conviction for misdemeanor domestic violence.
State Sen. Cale Case said he and former state Rep. Mike Baker, both Republicans, sponsored the Wyoming expungement law after Case heard from a constituent who had lost his right to own firearms because of a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction and then discovered there was no way to appeal.
"I just look at it as constitutional; it is the Second Amendment," Case said. "And to me, one of the fundamental rights in society shouldn't be lost for anything less than a felony conviction."
Wyoming Attorney General Pat Crank says the current lawsuit comes down to an issue of states' rights. The National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners Foundation in Washington, D.C., have both filed briefs supporting the state's position.
"We believe that Congress has very explicitly said that you look to state law to see if someone's firearms rights have been restored," Crank said.
Federal officials, however, say the issue is more narrow. They contend the state law fails to meet the legal standard for expungement.
Although the law allows people to petition in court to expunge a first misdemeanor conviction, it specifies that the record of that first conviction remains on the books for purposes of enhancing penalties for any subsequent crime.
"The nuts and bolts of the government's position is that an expungement of a conviction wipes the slates clean, and that an expungement erases a conviction," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Carol A. Statkus, one of the lawyers representing the ATF. "The Wyoming statute that's at issue in this case doesn't do that."
Mike Blonigen, the district attorney in Casper and vice president of the Wyoming Prosecutors Association, said the state needs to know either way whether its expungement law is valid in the eyes of the nation.
"I feel very uncomfortable telling people they're OK, when we don't know that they are," Blonigen said. "That's the biggest thing we're worried about: We do the expungement, they think they're OK, and they get into trouble in another state."
Case, however, says the lawsuit has become "a test case for the entire nation, and boy, I'm glad to have a small part in that. If we can get the constitutional rights remedied, that would be a great thing."
Daniel Webster, co-director for the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, says he worked on a national study that found that the risk women face of being killed in an abusive relationship increases approximately fivefold when their male partners have access to guns.
Webster said Wyoming's effort to restore gun rights to people who have been convicted of domestic violence "suggests that there's greater value being placed on guns than on individual's lives, and I think that's very sad."