In their first Second Amendment case since expanded gun rights In 2022, the judges ruled 8-1 in favor of a 1994 ban on firearms for Persons who’ve been banned from contact to avoid their spouses or partners. The judges overturned a ruling by the federal appeals court in New Orleans that had struck down the law.
Chief Justice John Roberts said in a letter for the court that the law relies on “common sense” and only applies “after a judge has determined that a person poses a credible threat” of physical violence.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the creator of the necessary 2022 Bruen decision in a New York case, dissented.
President Joe Biden, who has criticized previous Supreme Court rulings on guns, abortion and other sensitive issues, praised the consequence.
“No one who has been abused should have to worry about their abuser getting a gun,” Biden said in an announcement. “As a result of today’s ruling, victims of domestic violence and their families can continue to count on important protections, just as they have for the past three decades.”
Bump stocks are acceptable
Last week, the court overturned a Trump-era ban Raise stocksthe rapid-fire weapon accessories which can be within the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history. The court ruled that the Justice Department exceeded its authority in imposing this ban.
Friday’s case resulted directly from the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision in June 2022. A Texas man, Zackey Rahimi, was accused of hitting his girlfriend during an argument in a car parking zone and later threatening to shoot her.
At hearings in November, some judges expressed concern that a ruling in Rahimi’s favor could also jeopardize the background check system. According to the Biden administration, greater than 75,000 gun sales have been stopped over the past 25 years as a result of domestic violence protection orders.
The case has also been closely watched due to its potential impact on cases difficult other gun laws, including the high-profile Prosecution of Hunter Biden. Biden’s son was convicted of lying on a form to buy a firearm despite being hooked on drugs. His lawyers have indicated they may appeal.
A choice to abolish the domestic violence The gun law can also have reflected the court’s skepticism concerning the other laws, but Friday’s decision didn’t suggest that the court would necessarily uphold those laws as well.
The judges may soon rule on a number of of those other cases.
Many of the gun rights cases stem from the Bruen decision. This Supreme Court ruling not only expanded Americans’ constitutional gun rights, but additionally modified the best way courts should evaluate firearm restrictions.
Roberts: History is on our side
Roberts referenced the story in his statement. “Since the founding, our nation’s gun laws have included provisions to prevent people who threaten physical violence against others from misusing firearms,” he wrote.
Some courts have gone too far in applying the Bruen ruling and other gun rights cases, Roberts wrote. “These precedents should not create the impression that the law is in a bind,” he wrote.
Thomas disagreed, writing that the law “deprives a person of the ability to possess firearms and ammunition without due process.”
The government has provided “no evidence” that the law is consistent with the country’s historical tradition of gun regulation, he wrote.
“No historical provision justifies the law in question,” Thomas wrote.
Seven of the nine judges wrote 94-page opinions on the gun case, which focused totally on properly taking history into consideration when assessing gun restrictions and other limitations on constitutional rights.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that Roberts’ opinion “allows for a historical inquiry designed to uncover something useful that is applicable to the present, whereas the dissenting opinion would make the historical inquiry so sophisticated as to be useless.” She was one among three liberal justices who dissented within the Bruen case.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was a part of the Bruen majority, noted that the court will likely hear many more cases concerning the scope of gun rights because “Second Amendment jurisprudence is in its infancy.” It was not until 2008 that the court first declared that the Constitution protects a person’s right to maintain and bear arms.
Five shootings in two months
Rahimi’s case got here before the Supreme Court after prosecutors appealed a ruling that overturned his conviction for gun possession despite the existence of a restraining order.
Rahimi was involved in five shootings in and around Arlington, Texas, over a two-month period, U.S. District Judge Cory Wilson found. When police identified Rahimi as a suspect and showed up at his home with a search warrant, he admitted he had guns in the home and that he had a domestic violence restraining order against him prohibiting gun ownership, Wilson wrote.
But even when Rahimi was hardly a “model citizen,” Wilson said, the law in query can’t be justified by taking a look at history. That is the usual Justice Thomas set out in his opinion for the court in Bruen.
The appeals court initially upheld the conviction, considering whether the restriction increased public safety. But after the Bruen decision, the panel modified its mind. Since the Bruen decision, no less than one district court has upheld the law.
Following the ruling, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department would “continue to enforce this important law that has helped protect victims and survivors of domestic violence from their abusers for nearly 30 years.”
“As the Department of Justice argued and as the Court affirmed today, this commonsense ban is entirely consistent with the Court’s precedent and the text and history of the Second Amendment,” Garland said in an announcement.
Lawyers for victims of domestic violence and gun control groups had asked the court to uphold the law.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms have been essentially the most commonly used weapon in killings of spouses, domestic partners, children or relatives in recent times. In 2020, which saw an overall increase in domestic violence in the course of the coronavirus pandemic, firearms were utilized in greater than half (57%) of those killings.
According to the gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety, a median of seventy women are shot by their partners every month.
Gun rights groups supported Rahimi, arguing that the appeals court was correct in its review of American history and located no restriction close enough to justify the gun ban.
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Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein, Alanna Durkin Richer and Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
