Supreme Court upholds federal gun ban for those under domestic violence restraining orders
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that bans guns for those subject to domestic violence restraining orders (DVROs) in the first major test of the Second Amendment at the high court this term. In an 8-1 opinion authored by Chief Justice Roberts, the court's majority said, "[W]e conclude only this: 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." Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter. Both liberal and conservative justices agreed with the Biden administration that there was a history and tradition of keeping firearms from dangerous persons, despite the lack of any specific ban that may have been in place when the Constitution was enacted in the 1790s. The case, U.S. v. Rahimi, is first major test of the Second Amendment since a high court ruling in 2022 expanding rights of law-abiding citizens to carry handguns outside the home for protection, and could have major implications for several gun-rights measures working their way through the legal system and in state legislatures.
The case before the court stemmed from a lawsuit that involves a Texas man, Zackey Rahimi, who — under a DVRO — argued he still had a right to keep a gun for self-protection. Rahimi was charged with separate state offenses that began with the 2019 physical assault of his ex-girlfriend and later another woman by use of firearms.
Thomas wrote a long dissenting opinion.
"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. It cannot," he said.
"The Court and Government do not point to a single historical law revoking a citizen’s Second Amendment right based on possible interpersonal violence. The Government has not borne its burden to prove that [the statute] is consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding."The Framers and ratifying public understood ‘that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty,'" he continued. More From FoxNews: