The U.S. Supreme Court upholds law banning domestic abusers from owning guns

Customer at a gun shop. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images).

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that bars people who are victims of domestic violence from owning a firearm.

In an 8-1 decision over the United States vs. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the op-ed that “our nation’s firearms laws contain provisions that prevent individuals who cause physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”

“When a court finds that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed in accordance with the Second Amendment,” Roberts wrote.

Judge Clarence Thomasa staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, was the only dissenting opinion.

Thomas argued that the question before the court was not whether someone can have their firearms taken away under the Second Amendment, but instead whether the “government can deprive the Second Amendment rights of anyone subject to a protective order — even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime. It’s not possible.”

The White House and gun safety advocates hailed the long-awaited decision as a major victory.

“No one who has been abused should have to worry about the abuser getting a gun,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “As a result of today’s ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will continue to receive critical protections, just as they have for the past thirty years.”

Decision from 2022

This was the first major test of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision – New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen – which struck down a New York law restricting the carrying of firearms outdoors in a Supreme Court decision that greatly expanded gun rights. Thomas wrote that decision.

Due to Bruen’s decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit vacated Zackey Rahimi’s conviction on the grounds that federal law violated his Second Amendment rights.

In 2019, Rahimi attacked his girlfriend in Arlington, Texas, and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone, the Justice Department said. That led to a restraining order suspending his firearms license and banning him from possessing firearms.

But Rahimi disobeyed that order and then threatened another woman with a gun, opening fire in public five times two months later.

J. Matthew Wright, a federal public defender in North Texas who advocated for his client, Rahimi, declined to comment on the decision.

Roberts says the appeals court was wrong

Roberts argued that the court’s decision in Bruen “does not help Rahimi,” and said the 5th Circuit’s decision was wrong in methodology.

Roberts said that instead of assessing the circumstances in which the federal law “would be most likely to be constitutional, the panel instead focused on hypothetical scenarios in which the provision could raise constitutional issues.”

He said lower courts have misunderstood the methodology the Supreme Court used in the Bruen decision and that these “precedents were not intended to suggest a law trapped in amber.”

Roberts said lower courts should distinguish between “[w]hy and how regulations burden Second Amendment rights are the focus of this study.

“For example, if the laws at their founding regulated the use of firearms to address certain problems, that will be a strong indicator that contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions for similar reasons fall within a permissible category of regulation,” he said. “As Bruen explained, a challenged regulation that does not exactly match its historical predecessors ‘may still be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.’”

Liberal Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote a concurring opinion saying that while she agreed with the Rahimi decision, she still believed Bruen had been wrongly decided. However, she added that the decision “clarifies Bruen’s historical research.”

“Rather than asking whether current gun regulation has a precise historical analogue, courts applying Bruen would ‘consider whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles underlying our regulatory tradition,’” she said.

Sotomayor said in the Rahimi case that the government has not identified “a founding or Reconstruction-era law that specifically disarmed domestic abusers,” but that this was not necessary because there is “a shared principle” in restricting gun use by those who pose a threat.

“History plays a role in the analysis of the Second Amendment, but a rigid adherence to history (particularly history that predates the inclusion of women and people of color as full members of the polity) impoverishes constitutional interpretation and hinders our democracy,” she said. .

Historical precedent

During oral arguments in court in November, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who represented the Biden administration, argued that the 5th Circuit misinterpreted Bruen’s decision.

She said there is historical precedent in Congress’s ability to “disarm those who are not law-abiding, responsible citizens.”

Under a 1994 federal law, anyone convicted in a court of a “felony crime of domestic violence” and/or subject to domestic violence protective orders is prohibited from purchasing and possessing firearms and ammunition.

During these oral arguments, the justices – both liberal and conservative – appeared to side with Prelogar’s argument that the federal law is consistent with the long-standing practice of disarming dangerous people and does not violate an individual’s Second Amendment rights violates.

More than half of female homicide victims are murdered by current or former male intimate partners. Firearms are used in more than 50% of murders.

More than 20 states have laws that prohibit someone subject to an injunction in a domestic violence case from purchasing or possessing a gun and ammunition.

Some of those states include Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Protecting victims

Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the decision enforced a law that “protects victims by keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals who pose a threat to their intimate partners and children.”

“As the Department of Justice argued, and as the Court reaffirmed today, this common-sense ban is fully consistent with the Court’s precedent and the text and history of the Second Amendment,” Garland said.

Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director of gun safety advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said in a statement that the court’s decision will ensure that “millions across the country will be protected from the desires of gun rights extremists.”

“This is a win for the gun safety movement and another loss for the gun lobby determined to endanger lives,” Ferrell-Zabala said.

Douglas Letter, chief legal officer for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement that he hopes lower courts will follow the advice of Friday’s ruling.

“Guns are the weapon of choice for domestic abusers, and there is no reason why someone who poses a known danger should have access to firearms,” Letter said.

The report that the U.S. Supreme Court upholds law banning domestic abusers from owning guns first appeared in Ohio Capital Journal.