In a narrow 8-1 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a federal law which prohibits people who are subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing firearms.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, concluding, “An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
The 18-page ruling, and multiple concurring opinions may be read here. The case is known as U.S. v. Zackey Rahimi.
Only Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the 2022 Bruen decision, dissented.
In his majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts did warn the government, “in holding that Section 922(g)(8) is constitutional as applied to Rahimi, we reject the Government’s contention that Rahimi may be disarmed simply because he is not ‘responsible.’…’Responsible’ is a vague term. It is unclear what such a rule would entail. Nor does such a line derive from our case law. In Heller and Bruen, we used the term ‘responsible’ to describe the class of ordinary citizens who undoubtedly enjoy the Second Amendment right…But those decisions did not define the term and said nothing about the status of citizens who were not ‘responsible.’”
The Second Amendment Foundation, which is a leader in Second Amendment litigation—but was not part of the Rahimi case—issued a statement in reaction to the ruling.
“Today’s narrow Supreme Court decision in Rahimi failed to produce the damage the anti-gun crowd hoped for against Bruen,” the foundation said. “The Bruen decision remains intact and will continue to be an important building block necessary to continue winning firearms freedom one lawsuit at a time.
“None of the justices in the Bruen majority cast aside the test rearticulated in that decision which controls how Second Amendment challenges are to be analyzed,” SAF continued. “Additionally, the justices declined to adopt the Government’s preferred time period of reconstruction as the controlling era for which historical analogues may be drawn upon.
“Rahimi posed a difficult issue for the Court to resolve. And while the Court may have arrived at a conclusion that society believes to be best, it did so in a manner that poses some inconsistencies with what Bruen demands. To be clear, domestic violence is abhorrent and those who commit such acts should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law – for which a conviction would result in their disarmament through imprisonment.
“As Justice Thomas wrote “the question before us is not whether Rahimi and others like him can be disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Instead, the question is whether the Government can strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order – even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime.” Stripping an individual of their Second Amendment rights, when they have not been accused or convicted of a crime, is not consistent with what the Constitution protects.
“The Court’s justification in upholding the law by cobbling together bits and pieces of historical laws to find a “historical analogue” may allow future courts to uphold various infringements on the Second Amendment by the same sort of manufacture.
“While Rahimi himself is the focal point of this case, the unintended consequences of how the Court justified upholding 922(g)(8) may affect the Second Amendment rights of millions of Americans if the lower courts adopt a similar approach. This makes it all the more important the Court take any number of other Second Amendment cases at its door, to further clarify that the Second Amendment protects a pre-existing, fundamental individual right and how to appropriately conduct the analysis Bruen requires.”
On the other side, the Biden campaign was quick to capitalize on the ruling, according to News Nation. In a statement, the Biden campaign declared, “No American should overlook the startling reality behind today’s decision: Protecting domestic abuse survivors from gun violence should never be a question, but the fact it even had to be considered shows just how extreme Donald Trump and the gun lobby are. There’s only one candidate in this race fighting to save lives from gun violence and that’s Joe Biden.”
Rahimi was hit with a domestic violence restraining order after physically assaulting his girlfriend, who is the mother of his child, outside of a restaurant. When he noticed the incident was being observed, he grabbed a gun from his vehicle and, as the girlfriend was fleeing, he fired a shot, according to a history of the case detailed by Roberts in the ruling.
Subsequently, Rahimi was involved in other misbehavior with firearms, and ultimately indicted.
“This Court reviewed the history of American gun laws extensively in Heller and Bruen,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “From the earliest days of the common law, firearm regulations have included provisions barring people from misusing weapons to harm or menace others.
“Through these centuries,” Roberts added a few lines later, “English law had disarmed not only brigands and highwaymen but also political opponents and disfavored religious groups. By the time of the founding, however, state constitutions and the Second Amendment had largely eliminated governmental authority to disarm political opponents on this side of the Atlantic…But regulations targeting individuals who physically threatened others persisted. Such conduct was often addressed through ordinary criminal laws and civil actions, such as prohibitions on fighting or private suits against individuals who threatened others.”
According to the Washington Post, the court “left for another day more difficult questions about the viability of other gun-control measures, such as laws banning military-style semi-automatic rifles and large-capacity magazines.”
As explained by The Guardian, “The ruling… will leave in place legal protections against a major source of gun violence in America.
“The judgment will come as a relief to gun control advocates,” The Guardian added, “who had feared that the ability to disarm dangerous people might fall prey to the radical interpretation of the second amendment advanced by the court’s conservative supermajority. In the 2022 ruling New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen, the six conservative justices allowed handguns to be carried in public in most instances.”
