Supreme Court to Decide Domestic Violence Gun Case
Supreme Court to Decide Domestic Violence Gun Case
In a significant test of its decision from last year, which greatly expanded people’s ability to bear arms in public, the Supreme Court decided on Friday to consider whether the government may prohibit persons subject to domestic abuse orders from having guns.
The lawsuit will centre on the parameters of a new legal norm that was established in that ruling, one whose reliance on historical practises has caused confusion as courts have attempted to apply it, with some judges throwing down long-standing gun control laws.
It comes roughly a year after Congress momentarily broke its party gridlock to approve a modest bipartisan gun control measure, as the country battles to address a seemingly endless string of mass shootings and other gun violence.
A New York law that imposed tight restrictions on carrying firearms outside the home was overturned by the court last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which was decided by a 6-to-3 vote.
Lawyers on both sides of the argument saw the court’s decision to hear a Second Amendment case in its upcoming term as an effort to clarify the bounds of the Bruen decision and maybe offer a more precise set of standards.
In taking up the issue, the court will have “an opportunity to clean up some of the legal mess” from the previous year, according to Noah Lumbantobing, a spokesman for March for Our Lives, a group started by students in the wake of the Parkland, Florida, school shooting in 2018.
Some conservative legal authorities are worried that the court will ultimately limit the ruling from last year. Lawyer Stephen Halbrook, who has represented clients in court in gun matters, recently referred to the case as a “bad vehicle” to do so because the defendant, Zackey Rahimi, seemed unfit to acquire a firearm in any situation.
Since 2008, when it ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that people have a constitutional right to retain firearms in their homes for self-defense, the Supreme Court has only rendered two significant Second Amendment rulings. In McDonald v. Chicago, which was decided two years later, the court expanded the Heller ruling, which dealt with federal gun regulations, to state and local ones.
To the dismay of some of its conservative members, more than ten years of silence followed as the court repeatedly rejected appeals of rulings upholding gun control measures. The appointment of three justices by President Donald J. Trump altered the equation by creating a conservative supermajority.
Both the verdict and the court’s reasoning in the Bruen decision were critical.
Using early American history as a guide, Justice Clarence Thomas‘ majority opinion announced a new standard by which courts would now evaluate restrictions on gun rights: “The government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
He stated that the existence of such legislation during the 18th and 19th centuries determines whether or not present gun control measures are lawful.
Justice Thomas acknowledged the shortcomings of the new standard.
“Analogical reasoning requires only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin,” stated Justice Thomas. Therefore, even if a current legislation does not exactly match its historical precedents, it may nonetheless be similar enough to pass constitutional scrutiny.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has three judges and is located in New Orleans, declared in March that the new criterion compelled it to invalidate a federal law that forbade those under domestic abuse orders from carrying firearms since there was no precedent for it.
According to court documents, Mr. Rahimi, a drug dealer in Texas with a history of violent violence, is the subject of the case, United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915. A restraining order was obtained by Mr. Rahimi’s girlfriend in 2019 after he beat her and threatened to shoot her if she notified anybody. The order revoked Mr. Rahimi’s right to possess handguns and forbade him from doing so.
He was accused of assault with a deadly weapon after he brandished a gun and threatened another woman. He then shot five times in public over the course of two months.
For example, he shot an AR-15 weapon into the home of one of his former clients after becoming upset about a social media post made by someone he had provided drugs to. He opened fire into the air after a fast food outlet denied a friend’s credit card.
Following the shootings, a search warrant was obtained for Mr. Rahimi’s residence. Weapons were found there, and he was accused of breaking the law.
