WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law banning domestic violence perpetrators from owning guns, showing that a conservative court that has expanded gun rights also recognizes room for restriction.
“Since the nation’s founding, our firearms laws have contained provisions prohibiting the misuse of firearms by individuals who pose a threat of physical harm to others,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for an 8-1 majority, accusing some courts of misinterpreting recent court moves in support of gun rights.
But in his lone dissent on Friday, Justice Clarence Thomas, author of some of the country’s most landmark decisions on gun rights, said there was no “single historic regulation” that justified the ban.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the majority but dissented from basing the analysis on how the statute was viewed historically, saying the historical perspective on the Second Amendment is determined by the historians who are consulted.
“I could go on, but I’ll stop now.”
“From a historical perspective, who is protected by the Second Amendment?” Jackson wrote. “I could go on, as others have said, but I will not.”
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Joseph Blocher, co-director of the Firearms Law Center at Duke University Law School, said the ruling indicates the court will likely be more flexible in applying the historic test it set in 2022, but he couldn’t foresee how that test would apply to other restrictions, such as bans on nonviolent felons possessing guns or bans on high-capacity magazines.
Narrow victory for the government
“The Supreme Court will need to hear many more cases in the future to resolve these issues,” Blocher said. “This is a victory for the government, but in some ways it’s the narrowest victory for the government.”
The case involves Zackie Rahimi, a Texas man involved in five shootings between 2020 and 2021. Rahimi pleaded guilty to a federal crime of possessing a firearm while subject to a restraining order, but an appeals court overturned the conviction.
New Orleans-based 5Number The ruling was based on a blockbuster 2022 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that struck down a New York state law that required New York residents to have a “good reason” to carry a handgun.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that gun laws “must be consistent with the historical tradition of gun control in this country” to be challenged in court.
The Supreme Court said Friday that the appeals court erred in seeking to regulate “historical twins” rather than “historical analogs.”
Roberts wrote that some courts have “misunderstood the methodology of recent Second Amendment cases.”
“These cases do not suggest a law trapped in amber,” Roberts wrote. “To hold otherwise would be as wrong as applying the protection of rights only to muskets and sabers.”
When the court considered Rahimi’s case in November, questions arose about how to address situations like domestic violence, where few laws existed when the Second Amendment was written. Much of the discussion centered on the idea that even if the Constitution’s framers didn’t ban domestic abusers from owning guns, there is historical precedent for banning guns from people deemed dangerous.
In his dissent, Justice Thomas accused his fellow justices of “mixing historic statutes.” He called the strategy a “regulatory blank check” that allows the government to disarm the public.
“That is, governments need only find historical laws of comparable legitimacy to justify modern disarmament regimes,” Thomas wrote. “Consequently, historical laws that impose fines for certain acts may justify the complete disarmament of those who commit those same acts.”
“I can’t say I’m a model citizen.”
The appeals court acknowledged that Rahimi was “not a model citizen” but ruled that the law banning him from owning a gun was “unconventional and one that our ancestors would never have accepted.”
To underscore the importance of the case, hundreds of gun safety and domestic violence prevention advocates rallied outside the Supreme Court ahead of oral arguments in November, holding signs that read “Moms Demand Action” and “Students Demand Action” on gun control.
Brady PAC Executive Director Ashley Lantz said two-thirds of women killed by an intimate partner are killed with a gun.
“Today, thousands of women and victims of domestic violence can breathe a sigh of relief as the Court’s correct decision means their abusers cannot possess firearms,” Judge Luntz said in a statement Friday.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement that the court upheld a “common-sense ban” that conforms with the Second Amendment.
“The Department of Justice will continue to enforce this important law that has helped protect victims and survivors of domestic violence from their perpetrators for nearly three decades,” he said.
Even Second Amendment groups agree that Rahimi shouldn’t have a gun. In 2019, Rahimi pulled a gun and fired at a passerby he saw dragging his girlfriend through a parking lot. A few months later, after an accident, he fired multiple times at the other driver. In 2021, he fired multiple times at a Whataburger after his friend’s credit card was declined.
But the groups, including the National Rifle Association, argued that Rahimi’s guns should only be confiscated after he is convicted. They argue that federal law banning gun ownership through restraining orders is inconsistent with how courts have historically viewed criminal punishment.
In another major firearms case this year, the Supreme Court struck down a Trump-era federal ban on bump stocks, devices that allow semi-automatic rifles to fire like machine guns.
The Supreme Court has tended to side with gun rights in recent years, including major decisions in 2008, 2010 and 2022 that struck down New York state’s gun license laws.
The case is United States v. Rahimi.
