June 22 in Washington, DC:
The ruling by the US Supreme Court on Friday allowed the government to seize firearms from individuals who were subject to restraining orders due to domestic violence. Since the court initially acknowledged an individual's constitutional right to have firearms in the house for self-defense in 2008, the string of significant verdicts in favour of gun rights has been uninterrupted. The court's decision amounted to a retreat from this trend.
The court upheld the freedom to carry concealed weapons outside of one's home and established a new standard to evaluate various gun control statutes in its 2022 ruling. As a result of this new standard, lower court decisions have been murky, with some judges invalidating statutes that have been on the books for years.
The Texas man's potential prosecution under federal law, which makes it a criminal for those subject to domestic violence restraining orders to possess firearms, was addressed in the case that announced the ruling, United States v. Rahimi. According to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who wrote for the majority in the 8-to-1 decision, the answer is yes, and there are limits to Second Amendment rights.
The supreme court stated, "When a restraining order contains 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 banned from possessing firearms while the order is in effect." The supreme court stated, "Since the founding, our nation's firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms." In the 2022 judgement, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion and was the lone justice to vote against it. On Friday, the court ruled in favour of gun control advocates, according to legal experts.
An UC Los Angeles law professor named Adam Winkler made the following statement: "This decision will make it much easier for gun laws to survive legal challenge." "Overall, it shows that the majority of the court is not totally against gun laws," Winkler continued. Potentially, lower courts will see a future with greater discretion to enforce gun regulations.
The Bruen decision established that in order for gun restrictions to be upheld by the courts, a historical precedent must be located. Chief Justice Roberts noted on Friday, though, that the investigation need not seek out a precise match; instead, it can centre on general concepts. said, "The appropriate analysis involves considering whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition." The ruling of the majority justices was overturned by Justice Thomas.
According to him, "The court and government do not point to a single historical law revoking a citizen's Second Amendment right based on possible interpersonal violence." According to Justice Thomas, the government can deter dangerous individuals from possessing weapons by holding them accountable for violent crimes. "Strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order, even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime." he said, referring to something the government cannot do.
Three liberal justices on the court who had dissenting opinions in the Bruen case expressed in writing that they still considered the ruling a serious mistake. But they claimed they were delighted to accept the additional restrictions. Along with Justice Elena Kagan, Justice Sonia Sotomayor praised the ruling, saying it clarified the Bruen standard. In her opinion, "the court's interpretation permits a historical inquiry calibrated to reveal something useful and transferable to the present day, while the dissent would make the historical inquiry so exacting as to be useless, a too-sensitive alarm that sounds whenever a regulation did not exist in an essentially identical form at the founding."
According to Justice Sotomayor, Justice Thomas's analysis will lead to an absurd outcome. In her concurring opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson stated that lower courts were in a condition of profound bewilderment due to the Bruen decision. For her, the ruling by the chief justice constituted "a tacit admission that lower courts are struggling." Adding, "In my view, the blame may lie with us, not with them." was her last statement. Zackey Rahimi, a drug dealer from Texas, began the case in 2019 when he violently attacked his girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she notified anybody. As a result, she got a restraining order. Rahimi is no longer allowed to own firearms and has had his handgun permit suspended per the court's ruling.
Court records show that Rahimi disobeyed the order in a very public way. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon after threatening another woman with a gun. He reportedly shot five times in public within a two-month period, according to The New York Times. For example, in a fit of rage over a social media post by someone he had sold drugs to, he stormed into his ex-client's home brandishing an AR-15 gun. A friend's credit card was refused by a fast food restaurant, and he responded by firing multiple rounds into the air.
He was charged with breaking a federal law that makes it a criminal for those subject to domestic violence orders to possess guns after a search warrant was granted for Rahimi's residence in the aftermath of the shootings revealed weapons.
After Rahimi's challenge to the legislation based on the Second Amendment was denied by the judge, he pleaded guilty and received a prison sentence of more than six years. His conviction was initially upheld by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in a brief judgement, with the contention that the legislation infringed upon the Second Amendment dismissed in a footnote. A year following the Supreme Court's decision in the Bruen case, in 2023, the Court of Appeals changed its mind.
It found that the domestic violence order law was distinct enough from other statutes that the government had proposed as potential counterparts, and it so rejected those statutes. Ex-Trump appointee Judge Cory T. Wilson reportedly stated in a writing that "admits to no true limiting principle" the government's claim that it may disarm lawbreakers. He inquired about, "Could speeders be stripped of their right to keep and bear arms?" “Political nonconformists?” he asked. "Those who don't use electric vehicles or recycle?"
For Judge Wilson, the relevant federal statute "embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society." But he pointed out that judges couldn't weigh the pros and drawbacks of the law under the Bruen decision's mandated methodology. Using the ruling as an example, he stated that the fact that "our ancestors would never have accepted" the legislation on domestic violence orders was crucial.
In a statement, Chief Justice Roberts drew parallels between the domestic violence statute and earlier statutes that sought security bonds from those suspected of future misbehaviour and those that forbade the use of weapons to teach fear.
"Taken together, the surety and going armed laws confirm what common sense suggests: When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed," he wrote, expanding on the idea that the modern law being challenged "is by no means identical to these founding era regimes, but it does not need to be," according to The New York Times.
According to the top justice, the court's decision was "modest." Justice Roberts stated in his opinion, "only this: A person found by a court to constitute a credible danger to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment." In their concurring opinions, the three justices nominated by Trump discussed the breadth of the majority's stance and the practical application of originalism.
The Supreme Court has been unforgiving of the Fifth Circuit's conservative decisions, which have been authored by Republican appointees and which Rahimi's case falls within. When he handed down his decision on Friday, Chief Justice Roberts characterised the appeals court's decision as "slaying a straw man."
