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International rap sensation Artis Leon Ivey, Jr. — better known to the world as “Coolio” — was arrested on Friday at Los Angeles International Airport for being a felon in possession of a firearm. A carry-on bag containing the rap star’s possessions was apparently found by TSA inside a security checkpoint at LAX. The L.A. Times has the story.

Around 10:50 a.m., airport police responded to Terminal 3 after receiving a report about a prohibited item in the screening area, spokeswoman Alicia Hernandez said in a statement.

Police took possession of a carry-on bag on the X-ray screening belt and detained a 39-year-old man who claimed the bag, Hernandez said.

Authorities soon discovered that the bag “contained items belonging to one of the suspect’s traveling companions,” who had left the screening area and boarded a departing plane, Hernandez said….

Coolio… was booked into jail on suspicion of possession of a firearm by a felon.

The Las Vegas native was arrested at LAX in 2009 after authorities said they found rock cocaine in his luggage.

It’s not clear from the Times article that Coolio had actually been convicted of the offense he was charged with in Vegas, and my Internet search-fu was insufficient to find a definitive answer in a reasonable amount of time.

I did, however, find a 1998 article by an uncredited author at the Associated Press, which reported that a court in Stuttgart, Germany, had convicted Coolio of “being an accessory to robbery and causing bodily injury.” The man had been sentenced to six months’ probation and fined $17,000.00. The article goes on to report that Coolio had been facing a maximum sentence of four years in prison after his conviction.

The Coolio story caught my eye because it reminded me of a Supreme Court decision on gun laws from 2005, styled Small v. United States.

The Small case starred a hapless American named Gary Sherwood Small. Mr. Small had been apparently trying to recover a water heater from a Japanese airport, but there were some actual heaters in the tank, and the matter ended with him being convicted for violations of three Japanese laws: the Act Controlling the Possession of Firearms and Swords, the Gunpowder Control Act, and the Customs Act, all of which were felonies punishable by a term in prison exceeding one year. Small was sentenced to five years in prison, but was put on parole after only two years, and his involvement with the Japanese correctional system ended in 1998.

Repatriated to America, and presumably counting his lucky stars to be back in the Land of the Free, Small decided to exercise his civil rights as an American once again. He went to a gun store and bought a firearm.

Some time later, the ATF did an audit of the gun store’s records and Small ended up involved with the American prison system. Why? Because the language of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)–the law that prohibits certain ex-felons from possessing a firearm–says:

(g) It shall be unlawful for any person—
(1) who has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year…

to ship or transport in interstate or foreign commerce, or possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition; or to receive any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.

It was the phrase “in any court” that was the problem. The police said “any court” meant literally that — any court. Even if it was in Japan. Or Zimbabwe. Or Krypton. And even if the conviction was for “Felony Criticism our Glorious Maximum Leader, General Zod,” with a maximum sentence of eleventy-billion years in a orbital flat-mirror prison.

First of all: all hail General Zod, and his enlightened rule of Planet Houston. Second, isn’t it funny that some insist that the language of the Constitution is a living, breathing thing that evolves over time, but demand that certain statutes be interpreted strictly, damn the consequences?

Incredibly, the pre-Heller Supreme Court actually agreed with me, reversing the lower court’s ruling that Small was a prohibited person. The decision was written by the Clinton-appointed Justice Breyer (what the–?) and joined by Justices Stevens, O’Connor, Souter, and “The Notorious” RBG (huh??!?)

The Court held, in so many words: come on, man, the whole statute refers repeatedly to federal/state law, and even the legislative history didn’t mean that. So, no, you can only become prohibited from possessing firearms in America if you’re convicted by a qualifying offense by an American Court.

That notorious gun-grabber(?) Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, calling the Court’s decision “absurd” since, essentially, “any” should mean “any”, and even cited the Random House Dictionary of the English Language to prove his point. Fellow anti-gun collaborators Scalia(!) and Kennedy joined the dissent.

So after six years in the Japanese judicial system, and another five or so in the American one, and after a Supreme Court decision whose line-up is still giving me a migraine due to the cognitive dissonance, Small was finally a free man.

The upshot of all this — beyond being a fun afternoon read, and the question of whether or not strict constructionism always walks hand-in-hand with the right to keep and bear arms — is that if the charge against Coolio is legit, the German charge can’t be the reason why.

His walk through the valley of the shadow of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) must have been triggered by a felony conviction (or a state misdemeanor potentially punishable by more than two years in prison) here in America.

Maybe it was that ‘rock cocaine’ bust the Times mentioned from 2009, maybe it was something else. But at least we know that if we’re going to insist that Americans convicted of felonies be barred from possessing firearms long after their debt to society has allegedly been paid, it will be due to convictions by American courts operating under American laws.

I guess that’s something positive.

UPDATE: Coolio plead guilty to the charge, and the Court sentenced him to three years’ probation and 45 days of community service. Justice was thus served, after a fashion.

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37 COMMENTS

  2. I don’t think there’s as much cognitive dissonance in that particular SCOTUS decision as you think there is. You even allude to it in the text: rigid interpretation vs. fluid derivations of meaning.

    The statute clearly says any court, so the rigid constructionists interpret that to mean *ANY* court. The wackos feel that it should mean any American federal/state/local court, because of course, right? And they vote accordingly. The fact that the wack-a-doodles restored a man’s firearm rights must be kept completely beside the point, because it wasn’t a 2A case.

    The SCOTUS already incorrectly holds that permanent removal of 2A rights post-conviction is constitutional. Sounds like this particular case wasn’t a good enough test case to push for rights restoration, not that the high courts or anyone else are nearly ready for that anyhow.

  3. Not to be “that guy,” and I usually just shake my head and move on… but come on, is it really that hard to proof read before you publish an article? Or at the very least spell check (which should then be followed up by a good proof read anyway).

    sentance

    firearmays

    absured

    I expect crap like this from the hacks who write for the online portion of my local paper, but they’re not reaching a national (international?) audience on a daily basis.

    And I’m not just picking on the author of this one article…. it happens quite often.

    /rant

    • Okay, “sentance” and “absured” are just garden-variety typos, but I’m almost proud of “firearmays”… I haven’t seen a misspelling that bad since my days in banking, when I was given a credit application that stated the applicant had attended “Two Lane University” and whose current profession was “Eterney”.

      Alas, I cannot make edits post publication, but I’ll ask Dan to fix ’em.

  5. If Coolio is lucky, the case will be referred to FBI Director James Comey. Comey would have whitewashed Ted Bundy.

  6. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Coolio, exciting stuff… Now who is that blonde with the big cans standing in front of Bill Clinton in the ads?

    • Her name is Andrea Catsimatidis, daughter of billionaire grocer John Catsimatidis. She’s also recently divorced from Christopher Nixon Cox, who is Richard Nixon’s grandson.

      She’s okay, I guess, if your taste runs to flashy billionaire blondes with insane bodies.

  8. Wasn’t there an FFL who was considered a prohibited person after one of his employees stuck a case of shotgun shells in his trunk at the end of a gun show, and he made the mistake of crossing the border into Mexico with a few hundred pieces of contraband he didn’t know was in the car?

  10. Cookin’ with Coolio! It’s a refreshing take on a boring old cookbook.
    For what it’s worth, he should be wrist-slapped and given back his freedom, AND his gun.

  11. What does a water heater in Japan have to do with the Small decision?

    Was he trying to smuggle guns in or out of Japan in that heater?

    • Yes, the Japanese claim that he had a bunch of rifles and guns and other stuff verboten in the Emperor’s Paradise hidden in the water heater, Small, of course, disputes that.

      An attorney friend who I talked to about this case some years ago mentioned that the Japanese have something like a 99% conviction rate for charged criminals. If true, this means the Japanese police are just *that good*, or it means they’re no better than cops anywhere and the judicial system is stacked against defendants in a way that we can’t even conceive of in the USA,

      Either way, whatever the reasoning, I think the result of the Small case was correct

  12. A felon with a STOLEN firearm tries to board a plane. He is arrested and immediately released on bail, so he can make his next crappy rap concert. If he had been a card carrying NRA “right wing militia type” would he have been released so quickly and with so little fanfare?

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