A MILESTONE RULING
Supreme Court Upholds Gun Ban for Domestic Abuser
Protecting citizens’ Second Amendment right to own a gun is vitally important to many Americans. However, domestic violence and gun ownership can be a lethal combination. Assault on a spouse or partner can easily escalate to murder when one partner has access to a gun. In an 8–1 decision in U.S. v. Rahimi, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a person can be disarmed if they pose a credible threat to another person’s physical safety. The 18-page decision overturned a lower court ruling that banning gun ownership and possession for persons under a domestic violence restraining order violates the Constitution. Advocates for domestic violence victims welcomed the decision. Battered spouses are at greatest risk after leaving a relationship, filing a police report, or petitioning for a restraining order against their partner. In a 2023 study of 25 years of data, 56% of female homicide victims were murdered by men who were former or current
judiciary by setting a strict “history and tradition” test for the constitutionality of gun laws, according to The Trace, an independent, nonprofit news organization. In the Bruen ruling, the Supreme Court upheld individuals’ right to carry a firearm in public for self-defense, reasoning that a gun regulation must have an analog in early American history in order to be constitutional. That decision called into question a large number of earlier court rulings holding that gun regulations could be evaluated in the broader context of modern research, circumstances, and technology, sparking numerous challenges to gun laws and a flood of conflicting judgments. Based on the Rahimi ruling, proponents of gun control hope the courts will also uphold other laws restricting gun ownership under exceptional circumstances, including prohibitions for felons, people with severe mental illness, and individuals who pose a threat to themselves or others. Justice Clarence Thomas authored the lone dissenting opinion in the Rahimi case based on his absolutist interpretation that, at the time the Second Amendment was written, it did not regulate firearms possession by people who threaten physical harm to others. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts disagreed, reasoning that, since the nation’s founding, firearms laws have restricted citizens bent on hurting others from legal access to a gun. Those laws should not be explicitly limited to rules that existed at the nation’s
intimate partners. Other research links a domestic abuser’s access to a gun to a five-fold increase in homicide. The ruling is encouraging to proponents of gun control. It creates breathing room in the wake of the court’s February 2023 ruling in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. The Bruen decision sent ripples throughout the
founding. Instead, he wrote, “When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed.”
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