By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that makes it a crime for people who are victims of domestic violence to ban gun ownership. That handed a victory to President Joe Biden’s administration, as the justices opted not to further expand gun rights. a major expansion in 2022.
The 8-1 ruling, written by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts, overturned a lower court’s decision that struck down the 1994 law as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had concluded that the measure did not meet the Supreme Court’s strict 2022 test, which required gun laws to be “consistent with the nation’s historic tradition of firearms regulation.” to comply with the Second Amendment.
The Biden administration defended the law as crucial to protecting public safety and victims of abuse, who are often women. It argued that the ban should remain because of the long tradition in the United States of taking guns away from people considered dangerous. It stressed that guns pose a particularly serious threat in situations of domestic violence and are also extremely dangerous for police officers who have to respond.
Roberts wrote in the ruling that since the country’s founding, gun laws have targeted people who physically harm others.
“When a restraining order includes a finding that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner, that individual may – consistent with the Second Amendment – be barred from possessing firearms while the order is in effect” , Roberts wrote.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas was the dissent.
The case involved Zackey Rahimi, a Texas man who pleaded guilty in 2021 to illegally possessing weapons in violation of this law while subject to a restraining order for assaulting his girlfriend in a parking lot and later threatening to shoot her to shoot.
Police found a handgun and a rifle while searching his home in connection with at least five shootings, including using an assault rifle to shoot at the home of a man he had sold drugs to.
A federal judge rejected Rahimi’s Second Amendment challenge and sentenced him to more than six years in prison. Violating the domestic violence weapons law was initially punishable by up to ten years in prison, but has since been increased to fifteen years.
AMERICAN GUN VIOLENCE
In a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, 75% of registered voters, including 84% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans, said someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order should not possess firearms.
In a country bitterly divided over how to address gun violence, including frequent mass shootings, the Supreme Court has often taken a broad stance on the Second Amendment, expanding gun rights in landmark rulings in 2008, 2010 and 2022. The 2022 ruling , called New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen recognized a constitutional right to carry a gun in public for self-defense, overturning New York state restrictions on carrying concealed handguns outdoors.
In another firearms case, the Supreme Court on June 14 in a 6-3 ruling backed by the conservative majority declared illegal a federal ban on “bump stock” devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly like machine guns.
The 5th Circuit set aside Rahimi’s conviction in February 2023, concluding that while he was “hardly a model citizen,” the 1994 law was an “outlier” that could not meet the standard of “historical tradition” that the justices had announced in Bruen.
Supporters of Rahimi have argued that judges too easily issue restraining orders in an unfair process that results in the stripping of accused abusers’ constitutional gun rights.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in November.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
