What is the distinction between an American citizen and a noncitizen? Apparently, it’s a tough question for judges — almost as tough as defining what a woman is.

Recently, U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman dismissed the charges against an illegal immigrant living in Chicago who was arrested after he was found with a handgun. The Illegal alien, Heriberto Carbajal-Flores, was arrested in 2020 for violating Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code. That law bans noncitizens from possessing a firearm or receiving “any firearm or ammunition which has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.”

Carbajal-Flores said that he bought the firearm for self-defense and to protect his property “during a time of documented civil unrest” connected to the George Floyd protests and rioting. On that front, it’s hard to blame him. Furthermore, he had no prior record before his arrest.

In her decision, Coleman pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bruen, which overturned a New York law that forbade the carrying of a handgun in public. The court observed and ruled that the law violated the Second Amendment. Thus, according to Coleman, Carbajal-Flores’s Second Amendment rights were violated by the arrest.

As Coleman states in her ruling, “Thus, this Court finds that, as applied to Carbajal-Flores, Section 922(g)(5) is unconstitutional.” Apparently, for Coleman, the U.S. Constitution now applies to all the world.

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio noted that Coleman, like those on the Left, is seeking to “blur the line between citizenship and everything else — people that are here illegally.” He adds, “You almost wonder if it’s not being done to sort of mock both gun laws and also the whole understanding of the value of being a citizen of the United States of America.”

Rubio then pointed out, “There has to be a distinction between citizenship and noncitizenship — between being legally here and not legally here.”

Exactly. The notion that everyone has a right to come to America and enjoy its many benefits, including our Constitution, is now commonly accepted by many leftists and Democrats.

It’s the reason they and their Leftmedia allies repeatedly refuse to make clear the night-and-day distinction between legal and illegal immigration. While anyone may have a “right” to seek to legally immigrate to the U.S., that does not mean that their request must be accepted or that they should be allowed in illegally.

Just as homeowners have the right to allow or prevent whomever they wish from coming into their homes, so too a nation has the right to determine who it will allow in. Furthermore, all nations exercise the right to determine who may qualify for citizenship, which helps to ensure the best interests of a nation. Those who enjoy the rights and privileges of living in a country must also, for example, have an obligation to defend their country.

Noncitizens have no such loyalty or commitment. What Coleman has done is grant not only the issue of Second Amendment rights but also the issue of defending the unique rights and privileges of American citizenship. Her decision has cheapened both.