Posted on 06/21/24
| News Source: The Hill
The Supreme Court in a 8-1 decision upheld a federal law that disarms people under domestic-violence restraining orders, ruling it complies with the court’s recent expansion of Second Amendment rights.
Under that two-year-old precedent, which found a right to bear arms outside the home for the first time, the court has prescribed a new test requiring gun control measures fit within the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.
Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, noted a tradition of disarming individuals found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, rejecting a defendant’s challenge to the gun possession ban.
“Since the founding, our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms,” Roberts wrote.
Justice Clarence Thomas dissented.
The decision rules in favor of President Biden’s Justice Department, which appealed to the Supreme Court to defend the statute after a lower court deemed it unconstitutional under the new standard, throwing out a Texas man’s conviction.
Zackey Rahimi, the man, had been placed under a restraining order after he dragged his girlfriend, with whom he has a child, into a parking lot and attempted to shoot a witness. Rahimi later participated in a series of five shootings, court filings show, and he was indicted on the gun charge after police found a rifle and a pistol while searching his home.
The dispute marked the justices’ first plenary Second Amendment case since they established their new history-based test.