Supreme Court holds the states may disarm domestic abusers

The Supreme Court has held that the states may disarm people who are subject to a domestic violence restraining order. While the offender asserted the Second Amendment makes the law in question unconstitutional, the Court overwhelmingly disagreed.

The case is United States v. Rahimi, issued on June 21. This is an 8-1 ruling. Justice Thomas dissents.

Prior to the Supreme Court's ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), this would not have been an issue, as the Court had never previously held that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own a gun. Since that time, the Court has made it harder to regulate guns, as the Court in 2022 held in New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. v. Bruen that only gun regulations that resemble the ones in place at the time of the nation's founding in the 18th Century satisfy the Constitution. We call that "originalist" thinking. That legal standard came out of nowhere. So, while Justice Barrett in this case says that the Second Amendment is not absolute, the legal standard created by the Court in 2022 makes is as close to absolute as any of the Bill of Rights. The Supreme Court decides how to interpret the Constitution and it has authority to create legal standards to assist in that interpretation. As the Court writes in this case, 

appropriate analysis involves considering whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition. A court must ascertain whether the new law is “relevantly similar” to laws that our tradition is understood to permit, “apply[ing] faithfully the balance struck by the founding generation to to modern circumstances.”

Even under this pro-gun legal standard, the defendant in this case loses. "From the earliest days of the common law, firearm regulations have included provisions barring people from misusing weapons to harm or menace others." What follows is a lengthy dissertation on British case law dating to the 17th Century. These old legal precedents also allowed judges to "prevent all forms of violence, including spousal abuse." Back then, the laws also "targeted the misuse of firearms." While the law at issue in this case "is by no means identical to these founding era regimes, . . . it does not need to be. Its prohibition on the possession of firearms by those found  by a court to present a threat to others fits neatly within the tradition" the older laws represent.

Justice Jackson's concurring opinion notes that the majority opinion impliedly concedes the legal standard first articulated in Bruen is difficult to apply, which explains why the Chief Justice in this ruling tries to clarify what Bruen really means. Jackson notes that lower courts are struggling to understand Bruen and that "there is little method to Bruen's madness."