Do undocumented immigrants have the right to own guns?

The night of June 1st 2020 was a chaotic one in Chicago. A week earlier, George Floyd had been murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, and protests against police brutality had spread all over the world. A day before, the then mayor, Lori Lightfoot, had requested help from the National Guard for the first time since the riots of 1968. Such was the situation when Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, a then-28-year-old carpenter, borrowed a gun and joined a group of men defending a tyre shop in Little Village, a Mexican neighbourhood, from would-be looters. At around 11pm, in full view of a camera, Mr Carbajal-Flores shot seven times in the direction of a white car that was speeding past. Forty minutes later, he was arrested.

So far, just another story of madness on that hot summer night. But Mr Carbajal-Flores’s rather reckless defence of property may yet change America. In early March the last of the charges originally filed against him was dismissed by a federal judge in Chicago. Mr Carbajal-Flores, a Mexican citizen who arrived illegally in America as a child, was accused of breaking the federal law which bans undocumented immigrants (as well as foreigners on temporary visas) from owning guns. The judge, Sharon Johnson Coleman, ruled that, as applied to him, the law was unconstitutional. Citing cases of former British loyalists in the revolutionary war who were allowed guns, she argued that Mr Carbajal-Flores was entitled to an “individualised assessment” about whether he had a right to own a gun; and in his case, he did.