LAS VEGAS – NOVEMBER 14: Eric Brandon of Nevada tries out a semi-automatic pistol at The Gun Store November 14, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Store manager Cliff Wilson said he’s seen a large spike in sales since Barack Obama was elected president on November 4, with customers citing fears about the president-elect’s record on firearms. The election, combined with a slumping economy, has contributed to an overall increase of 25-30 percent in gun sales at the store, Wilson said. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court Friday upheld a federal law that bars people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from owning a firearm.
In an 8-1 decision in United States v. Rahimi, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion that “our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms.”
“When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment,” Roberts wrote.
Justice Clarence Thomas, a staunch advocate of the Second Amendment, was the lone dissent.
Thomas argued that the question before the court was not if someone can have their firearms taken away under the Second Amendment, but instead 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. It cannot.”
The White House and gun safety advocates welcomed the long-awaited decision as a major victory.
“No one who has been abused should have to worry about their abuser getting a gun,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “As a result of today’s ruling, survivors of domestic violence and their families will still be able to count on critical protections, just as they have for the past three decades.”
That was echoed by Maryland lawmakers, who said the high court’s ruling “will help protect lives.”
“This ruling is a step in the right direction, helping to keep survivors and their families safe from preventable gun violence,” Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown said in a prepared statement.
Sen. Jeff Waldstreicher (D-Montgomery), the vice chair of the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, called the 8-1 ruling “a vindication for Maryland’s bold and comprehensive approach to gun violence.”
“By its own logic, the Court in Rahimi upheld two important Maryland policies: the removal of guns from domestic violence abusers, and our state’s red-flag law,” Waldstreicher said.
2022 decision
This was the first major test of the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that struck down a New York law limiting carrying firearms. Thomas wrote that decision, which greatly expanded gun rights.
Because of Bruen, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Zackey Rahimi’s conviction on the grounds that the federal law violated his Second Amendment rights.
Rahimi had assaulted his girlfriend in Arlington, Texas, in 2019 and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone, according to the Justice Department. That led to a restraining order that suspended his handgun license and prohibited him from possessing firearms.
But Rahimi did not adhere to that order and then threatened another woman with a gun, and two months later opened fire in public five times.
J. Matthew Wright, Rahimi’s North Texas federal public defender, declined to comment on Friday’s decision.
Roberts says appeals court was wrong
Roberts argued the court’s decision in Bruen does “not help Rahimi,” and said the 5th Circuit’s decision was wrong in its methodology.
Roberts said instead of reviewing the circumstances in which the federal law “was most likely to be constitutional, the panel instead focused on hypothetical scenarios where the provision might raise constitutional concerns.”
He said that lower courts have misunderstood the methodology the high court used in the Bruen decision and that those “precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.”
Roberts said that lower courts should discern “why and how the regulation burdens” on the Second Amendment right “are central to this inquiry.”
“For example, if laws at the founding regulated firearm use to address particular problems, that will be a strong indicator that contemporary laws imposing similar restrictions of similar reasons fall within a permissible category of regulations,” he said. “As Bruen explained, a challenged regulation that does not precisely match its historical precursors ‘still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.’”
In a concurring opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that while she agreed with the Rahimi decision, she still believed Bruen was wrongly decided. But she added that Rahimi “clarifies Bruen’s historical inquiry.”
“Rather than asking whether a present-day gun regulation has a precise historical analogue, courts applying Bruen should ‘consider whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,’” she said.
Sotomayor said in the Rahimi case, the government did not identify a “founding-era or Reconstruction-era law that specifically disarmed domestic abusers,” but that it didn’t need to because there is “shared principle” in restricting gun use by those who pose a threat.
“History has a role to play in Second Amendment analysis, but a rigid adherence to history, (particularly history predating the inclusion of women and people of color as full members of the polity), impoverishes constitutional interpretation and hamstrings our democracy,” she said.
Historical precedent
During oral arguments before the court in November, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued on behalf of the Biden administration that the 5th Circuit misinterpreted the Bruen decision. She said there is historical precedent in the ability of Congress to “disarm those who are not law-abiding, responsible citizens.”
Under a 1994 federal law, anyone who has been convicted in any court of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence,” or is subject to domestic violence protective orders, is prohibited from purchasing and possessing firearms and ammunition.
During those arguments, the justices – both liberal and conservative – seemed to side with Prelogar’s argument that the federal law is in line with the longstanding practice of disarming dangerous people and does not violate an individual’s Second Amendment rights.
More than half of female homicide victims are killed by current or former male intimate partners. Firearms are used in more than 50% of those homicides.
Besides, more than two dozen states have laws that prevent someone subject to an order in a domestic violence case from buying or possessing a gun and ammunition. Some of those states include Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Protecting victims
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement the decision upheld a law that “protects victims by keeping firearms out of the hands of dangerous individuals who pose a threat to their intimate partners and children.”
“As the Justice Department argued, and as the Court reaffirmed today, that commonsense prohibition is entirely consistent with the Court’s precedent and the text and history of the Second Amendment,” Garland said.
Angela Ferrell-Zabala, the executive director of the gun safety advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said in a statement that the court’s decision will ensure that “millions across the country will be protected over the desires of gun rights extremists.”
“This is a win for the gun safety movement and another loss for the gun lobby hellbent on putting lives in danger,” Ferrell-Zabala said.
Douglas Letter, the chief legal officer of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in a statement that he hopes lower courts will follow the advice from Friday’s ruling.
“Guns are the number one weapon of choice for domestic abusers, and there is no reason why anyone who is a known danger should be permitted access to firearms,” Letter said.
– Maryland Matters reporter William J. Ford contributed to this report from Annapolis.
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