WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s ruling Friday upholding a law banning domestic abusers from possessing firearms — a rare victory for gun control advocates — doesn’t mean it will stop striking down other gun restrictions.
The court has several pending cases on which it could intervene next week, which would provide further signs of how eager the conservative majority is to continue a long-term campaign to reshape the scope of the right to bear arms.
How the court approaches these cases will determine whether Friday’s ruling was an exception or a sign that it is retreating from a comprehensive understanding of the Constitution’s Second Amendment.
The increase in gun rights activity stems from the court’s relatively new adoption of an individual right to bear arms, as first articulated in a 2008 ruling but significantly expanded in 2022.
In the last decision – a case called New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. — the court said gun restrictions should be analyzed based on a historical understanding of the right to bear arms. This has led to a wave of new challenges to well-established gun restrictions, including the ban on domestic violence at issue in Friday’s ruling in United States v.
In the latest ruling, the court upheld what was dubbed the “history and tradition” test for reviewing gun restrictions, but appeared to take a slight step back from the hard-line approach of the Bruen decision. In fact, Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion in the Bruen case, was the only justice on Friday to say that he would have ruled that the federal domestic violence law was unconstitutional.
But it remains to be seen how the court will address other gun restrictions, all of which have to be analyzed based on whether there is some kind of historical analogy.
Gun control advocates took solace in the latest ruling, with Esther Sanchez-Gomez, director of litigation at Giffords Law Center, saying it showed that “common sense still needs to rule the day.”
The ruling, she added, “gives me hope” that the court might uphold other gun restrictions in future cases.
Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Firearms Law Center at Duke University School of Law, said Rahimi’s decision was narrow and does not dictate the outcome of other gun cases.
“In some ways, the court is committed to deciding a number of other challenges in the coming years,” he added.
Among the cases the court may consider hearing in the coming days is a challenge to a federal law that prohibits non-violent criminals from owning guns, and another that also prohibits people who use illegal drugs from owning firearms.
This latest case addresses the same criminal statute under which Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, was recently convicted in Delaware. As such, any Supreme Court ruling that finalizes the law may violate the right to bear arms in certain situations and may ultimately help you.
The nonviolent felon case involves a Pennsylvania man named Bryan Range, who was convicted in 1995 of making a false statement to obtain food stamps. The conviction led to his disqualification under federal law from owning a gun, which led him to sue the government, claiming that his right to bear arms had been violated.
The case with close similarities to that of Hunter Biden concerns Patrick Daniels, who was stopped by police in Mississippi in April 2022 and found to be in possession of marijuana, a loaded pistol and a loaded rifle.
In both cases, the Biden administration appealed after losing in lower courts, where the justices cited the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in favor of gun owners.
The court could decide to hear one or both cases, or it could send them back to lower courts for further consideration in light of Rahimi’s decision.
If the court were to take up the cases, there is no guarantee that both would come out the same, based on what the court said in the Rahimi ruling.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts focused in part on the fact that there had been a determination that accused domestic abuser Zackey Rahimi was a “credible threat to the physical safety of others.” He also highlighted that the ban was temporary.
Clark Neily, an attorney with the libertarian Cato Institute, which supports gun rights, said the nonviolent cases of criminals and drug users present very different questions, including whether the defendants in both cases are a danger to others.
“These are distinct restrictions on gun ownership in the sense that the characteristics of someone who is an illegal drug user are different from the characteristics of someone who has been convicted of a crime,” he said.
As for Hunter Biden, who was convicted of one count of violating gun law by obtaining the gun as a narcotics user and two counts of false statements related to purchasing the gun from a gun dealer, legal experts say Rahimi’s decision You can help your chances of having your gun license revoked by having an appeal.
Biden’s lawyers argued in a court filing that his gun trial should be delayed until after the Rahimi case and potentially others are all decided, and predicted that the outcome of the Rahimi case could offer “guidance” to the judge presiding over the case.
Willinger said Biden could make use of the ruling on appeal, pointing to the high court’s focus on Rahimi’s violent behavior — something that was not an issue in the Biden case.
“You could imagine Hunter Biden’s lawyers making a strong argument to distinguish their case from this one,” Willinger said.
The list of gun cases the court could decide is not limited to non-violent crimes and drug use issues.
Adam Kraut, executive director of the Second Amendment Foundation, a gun rights group, said he is hopeful the court will move beyond cases like Rahimi’s, which focus on who is prohibited from owning a gun, and focus on laws that prohibit specific types of weapons and possession in certain places.
Among the petitions pending in court are a challenge to a law enacted in New York that, among other things, prohibits the possession of weapons in certain “sensitive places” and another case seeking a ban in Illinois on assault and large-capacity weapons. . magazines.
“This would be another step forward” from a gun rights perspective if the court took up one of these cases, Kraut said.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
