SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 8 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday rejected the appeal of an illegal immigrant who was convicted of possessing a firearm, which is in violation of federal law.
A three-judge panel of the ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the federal law that bans undocumented people in the United States from owning guns, saying it does not violate the second Amendment to the Constitution which gives the public the right to carry arms.
The appeal was brought by Victor Manuel Torres, a Mexican national residing in San Jose, Northern California, who was arrested in March after police officers found a loaded revolver in a backpack in his pickup, court documents showed.
Torres was then indicted for "one count of being an unlawful alien in possession of a firearm" in violation of federal law.
However, the Mexican immigrant appealed against the indictment on grounds that he was protected under the Second Amendment.
The judges of the San Francisco court ruled that while the Second Amendment "guarantees the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation," the constitutional right "is not unlimited."
Federal law says that it is unlawful for a foreigner "illegally or unlawfully in the United States" to possess any firearm.
The court file said that illegal immigrants are hard to monitor "due to an inherent incentive to falsify information and evade law enforcement."
