By Andrew Chung
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday upheld a federal law that makes it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to own guns, handing a victory to President Joe Biden’s administration as the justices chose not to further expand firearms rights after a major expansion in 2022.
The 8-1 decision, authored by conservative Justice John Roberts, overturned a lower court’s decision that struck down the 1994 law as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.”
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the measure failed the Supreme Court’s stringent test established in 2022, which required gun laws to be “consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of regulating firearms” to comply with the Second Amendment.
The Biden administration has defended the law as critical to protecting public safety and abuse victims, who are often women. She argued that the ban should survive because of the long tradition in the United States of taking guns away from people considered dangerous. She emphasized that guns pose a particularly serious threat in domestic violence situations and are also extremely dangerous for law enforcement officers called to respond.
Roberts wrote in the ruling that since the country’s founding, gun laws have targeted people who threaten physical harm to others.
“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 – under the Second Amendment – be prohibited from possessing firearms while the order is in effect.” , wrote Roberts.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas was the direct dissenter.
The case involved Zackey Rahimi, a Texas man who pleaded guilty in 2021 to illegally possessing weapons in violation of this law while subject to a restraining order for assaulting his girlfriend in a parking lot and later threatening to shoot her.
Police found a pistol and a rifle while searching his residence in connection with at least five shootings, including the use of an assault rifle to shoot up the home of a man to whom he had sold drugs.
A federal judge rejected Rahimi’s Second Amendment challenge and sentenced him to more than six years in prison. Violation of the domestic violence weapons law was initially punishable by up to 10 years in prison, but has since been increased to 15 years.
AMERICAN GUN VIOLENCE
In a May Reuters/Ipsos poll, 75% of registered voters, including 84% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans, said a person subject to a domestic violence restraining order should not be allowed to own firearms.
In a nation bitterly divided over how to deal with gun violence, including frequent mass shootings, the Supreme Court has frequently taken a sweeping view of the Second Amendment, expanding gun rights in landmark rulings in 2008, 2010 and 2022. The decision to 2022, called New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, recognized the constitutional right to carry a gun in public for self-defense, overturning New York state’s limits on carrying concealed weapons outside the home.
In another firearms case, the Supreme Court on June 14, in a 6-3 decision supported by its conservative majority, declared illegal a federal ban on “bump stock” devices that allow semiautomatic weapons to fire rapidly. like machine guns.
The 5th Circuit in February 2023 overturned Rahimi’s conviction, concluding that although he was “hardly a model citizen,” the 1994 law was an “outlier” that could not meet the standard of “historical tradition” which the judges announced in Bruen.
Rahimi’s supporters argued that judges too easily issue restraining orders in an unfair process that results in those accused of abuse being deprived of their constitutional gun rights.
The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case in November.
(Reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham)
