Filed: Apr. 13, 2011
Latest Update: Feb. 22, 2020
Summary: UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 09-4098 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. CORY CHAFIN, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at Charleston. John T. Copenhaver, Jr., District Judge. (2:08-cr-00129-1) Argued: March 22, 2011 Decided: April 13, 2011 Before SHEDD and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior Circuit Judge. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. ARGU
Summary: UNPUBLISHED UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT No. 09-4098 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. CORY CHAFIN, Defendant - Appellant. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at Charleston. John T. Copenhaver, Jr., District Judge. (2:08-cr-00129-1) Argued: March 22, 2011 Decided: April 13, 2011 Before SHEDD and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior Circuit Judge. Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion. ARGUE..
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UNPUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 09-4098
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff - Appellee,
v.
CORY CHAFIN,
Defendant - Appellant.
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of West Virginia, at Charleston. John T. Copenhaver,
Jr., District Judge. (2:08-cr-00129-1)
Argued: March 22, 2011 Decided: April 13, 2011
Before SHEDD and DUNCAN, Circuit Judges, and HAMILTON, Senior
Circuit Judge.
Affirmed by unpublished per curiam opinion.
ARGUED: Nicholas S. Preservati, PRESERVATI LAW OFFICES, PLLC,
Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. Steven Robert Ruby,
OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia,
for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Joseph L. Jenkins, PRESERVATI LAW
OFFICES, PLLC, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant.
Charles T. Miller, R. Booth Goodwin II, United States Attorneys,
Samuel D. Marsh, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE
UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee.
Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.
PER CURIAM:
Cory Chafin appeals his conviction for selling a firearm to
a person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such
person is an unlawful user of drugs, 18 U.S.C. § 922(d)(3). We
affirm.
On February 6, 2008, Chafin, at the time an unlawful user
of drugs, purchased an AK-47 rifle from Graybeal Firearms, a
federally licensed firearms dealer in Peytona, West Virginia.
Before purchasing the rifle, Chafin completed an ATF Form 4473
in which he answered “NO” to the question that asked if he was
an unlawful user of drugs. On February 11, 2008, Chafin
returned to Graybeal Firearms and purchased another AK-47 rifle.
Again, on the Form 4473, he falsely stated that he was not an
unlawful user of drugs. On February 22, 2008, Chafin sold the
AK-47 he had purchased on February 6 to his friend, Juan Chic,
who, at the time of the sale, was also an unlawful user of
drugs.
On June 10, 2008, a federal grand jury sitting in the
Southern District of West Virginia returned a four-count
indictment against Chafin. Counts One and Two charged Chafin
with making a false statement on a Form 4473,
id.
§ 924(a)(1)(A). Count Three charged Chafin with selling a
firearm to a person knowing or having reasonable cause to
believe that such person was an unlawful user of drugs,
id.
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§ 922(d)(3). Count Four charged Chafin with possession of
firearms while being an unlawful user of drugs,
id. § 922(g)(3).
On July 31, 2008, Chafin filed a motion to dismiss the
indictment, contending that each count in the indictment
violated his Second Amendment right to bear arms. On August 7,
2008, the district court denied the motion. Subsequently,
Chafin entered a conditional plea of guilty to Count Three of
the indictment, reserving his right to raise on appeal that
“§ 922(d)(3) is unconstitutional . . . in light of” the Supreme
Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller,
554 U.S. 570
(2008). The district court accepted Chafin’s conditional plea
and found him guilty of the § 922(d)(3) offense charged in Count
Three. On January 26, 2009, Chafin was sentenced to thirty-
seven months’ imprisonment. He noted a timely appeal.
On appeal, Chafin contends that his § 922(d)(3) conviction,
per Heller, is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. We
disagree.
The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia,
being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of
the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S.
Const. amend. II. This amendment protects an individual’s right
to possess arms without regard to militia service.
Heller, 554
U.S. at 595. However, an individual’s right to bear arms is not
“unlimited, just as the First Amendment’s right of free speech
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[is] not.”
Id. Moreover, because the Second Amendment, like
the First Amendment, codifies a pre-existing right, the scope of
the protection afforded by the amendment is a matter of
historical inquiry. United States v. Chester,
628 F.3d 673, 678
(4th Cir. 2010).
As a result, in evaluating Second Amendment claims, we
apply a two-part test. First, we ask “whether the challenged
law imposes a burden on conduct falling within the scope of the
Second Amendment’s guarantee.”
Id. at 680 (citation and
internal quotation marks omitted). “This historical inquiry
seeks to determine whether the conduct at issue was understood
to be within the scope of the right at the time of
ratification.”
Id. If the conduct is not within such scope,
then the challenged law is valid.
Id. If the challenged law
“burdens conduct that was within the scope of the Second
Amendment as historically understood, then we move to the second
step of applying an appropriate form of means-end scrutiny.”
Id.
Here, Chafin contends that his conduct—the sale of a
firearm to an unlawful user of drugs—falls within the historical
scope of the Second Amendment. However, Chafin has not pointed
this court to any authority, and we have found none, that
remotely suggests that, at the time of its ratification, the
Second Amendment was understood to protect an individual’s right
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to sell a firearm. Indeed, although the Second Amendment
protects an individual’s right to bear arms, it does not
necessarily give rise to a corresponding right to sell a
firearm. Cf. United States v. 12 200-Foot Reels of Super 8mm.
Film,
413 U.S. 123, 128 (1973) (“We have already indicated that
the protected right to possess obscene material in the privacy
of one’s home does not give rise to a correlative right to have
someone sell or give it to others.”). Accordingly, Chafin’s
argument that § 922(d)(3) is unconstitutional under Heller must
be rejected. ∗
AFFIRMED
∗
Chafin raises two additional arguments that are outside
the scope of the argument he reserved for appeal as part of his
conditional guilty plea. More specifically, he argues that
§ 922(d)(3) violates the Second Amendment, because § 922(g)(3)
violates the Second Amendment. He also argues that his Second
Amendment right to bear arms “cannot be deprived without prior
notice and an opportunity to be heard.” Appellant’s Br. at 10.
We decline to address these arguments because they fall outside
the scope of the issue Chafin reserved for appeal as part of his
conditional guilty plea. Cf. United States v. Bundy,
392 F.3d
641, 650 n.3 (4th Cir. 2004) (“Where a defendant who pled guilty
presents on appeal an issue that he did not even attempt to
preserve by means of a conditional plea, we decline to entertain
the appeal on the ground that the defendant’s unconditional plea
waived that issue altogether.”).
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