The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in a major gun rights case.
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The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal ban on the possession of firearms by anyone covered by a domestic violence court order. The vote was 8 to 1.
The ruling is the first major gun ruling since 2022, when the high court departed from the court’s previous approach to gun laws; the decision declares for the first time that in order for gun laws to be constitutional, they must resemble those that existed when the nation was founded in the late 1700s .
But on Friday, the court majority seemed more flexible in drawing that line.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the court’s majority, said the Second Amendment allows for the temporary disarmament of a person when that person is found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, authoring the decision two years ago that significantly expanded the Second Amendment right to bear arms to include the right to keep and carry guns in public. He wrote at the time that the constitutional right to bear arms was not a second-class right, governed by an entirely different system of rules than other guarantees in the Bill of Rights.
Since then, Second Amendment advocates have launched a variety of challenges to state and federal gun laws across the country, leading lower courts to conflicting conclusions on the accuracy of the simulations. Friday’s ruling is the first test of how far the conservative court wants to go and how precise the simulation of the founding laws must be. At issue is federal law that makes it a crime for anyone subject to a domestic violence court order to possess a firearm.
The defendant in the case, Zackey Rahimi, was a poster boy for Congress’s efforts to pass the law in 1994. He then realized a bystander had seen him in action. Two months later, a Texas court issued a protective order against her, revoked Rahimi’s firearms license and warned him that possessing a firearm while the order was in effect was a federal felony.
Rahimi repeatedly violated court orders by threatening another woman with a gun and firing shots at five different locations within a month, with incidents ranging from repeatedly shooting another driver after a collision to firing multiple shots into the air After declining a friend’s credit card at a fast food restaurant. When police searched his residence, they found a handgun, a rifle, magazines, ammunition and a copy of the protection order.
He pleaded guilty to a charge of violating federal firearms laws and was sentenced to six years in prison. But he continued to mount a constitutional challenge, and eventually the ultraconservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law was unconstitutional because there was no similar law in the 1790s. The federal government appealed, saying the country has a long tradition of disarming dangerous people.
Victims of domestic violence have also spoken out, noting that in the country’s founding, women had few legal rights and were largely viewed as the property of their husbands. They also point to modern statistics showing that in 2019, when Rahimi’s case began, more than 70 women were shot dead by domestic partners each month and that domestic violence involving a gun was 11 times more likely to result in death. Gun attacks are more effective.
Supporters of domestic violence gun bans also point out that women are not the only victims in these cases. Domestic violence involving firearms is a leading cause of death among children. More than half of mass shootings are committed by people with domestic violence records. Finally, domestic violence calls result in the highest number of police deaths, nearly all of which are gun-related.
Friday’s court decision is a victory for so-called “reasonable gun control” that will have some ripple effects; it could make lower courts more hesitant to strike down laws designed to prevent dangerous people from owning guns.
But as several justices observed during oral arguments in November, Rahimi’s case is a “simple case,” and other more difficult cases lie ahead. They include challenges to federal and state laws that prohibit convicted felons, including those convicted of nonviolent crimes, from possessing firearms, as well as state “red flag” laws that allow family members and police to The judge requested an emergency order to temporarily ban gun possession.
