Supreme Court upholds gun ban for domestic-violence restraining orders
The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that prevents people who are subject to domestic-violence restraining orders from having firearms — its first major Second Amendment decision since a 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights. Cut through the 2024 election noise. Get The Campaign Moment newsletter. The court said the Constitution permits laws that strip guns from those deemed dangerous, one of a number of firearms restrictions that have been imperiled since the conservative majority bolstered gun rights in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. In an 8-1 ruling, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that “when a restraining order contains a finding that an individual poses a credible threat to the physical safety of an intimate partner, that individual may — consistent with the Second Amendment — be banned from possessing firearms while that order is in effect.”
“Some courts have misunderstood the methodology of our recent Second Amendment cases,” Roberts wrote. “These precedents were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, who authored the Bruen decision, was the lone dissenter on Friday, writing that “not a single historical regulation justifies the statute at issue.”
“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 in a statement.
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