The US supreme court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in a case which gun and domestic violence prevention groups are warning could be a matter of life and death for thousands of abuse victims and their families.
Tuesday’s hearing on United States v Rahimi is seen as one of the most consequential cases with which the nine justices will grapple this term. At stake is how far the new hard-right supermajority of the court will go in unraveling the US’s already lax gun laws, even as the country reels from a spate of devastating mass shootings.
Also at stake, say experts, are the lives of thousands of Americans, overwhelmingly women, threatened with gun violence at the hands of their current or former intimate partners.
Someone should also mention that anyone convicted of domestic violence should also not be in possession of any guns that are issued by an employer since I’m certain those folks would argue they don’t “own” the gun.
That is already a thing. The prohibited persons restriction of the Lautenberg Amendment applies to any possession, not just ownership. Even the military is required to continually verify that servicemembers are still legally allowed to be issues weapons for duty.
Is that a two birds, one stone situation bc that would get rid of most cops.
Inaccurate headline.
SCOTUS will hear a case about whether people accused of domestic abuse–but not convicted of any offense–and subject to a protection order are permitted to own firearms.
Why does that matter?
The evidentiary bar is much, much lower to get a protection order than it is to convict a person of a domestic violence offense, including misdemeanor domestic violence offenses. Because it’s not a criminal proceeding, and because the stakes are generally much lower for the accused, it can be considerably easier to get a protection order from a judge than it is to get a criminal conviction of any offense.
That’s not a good basis for eliminating rights.
If you want to take the guns from domestic abusers, then for fucks’ sake, prosecute them. Even a misdemeanor conviction is sufficient to bar someone from owning firearms for life, or until the conviction is vacated.
EDIT - the defendant in this case did plenty of other things that should have gotten him barred from owning firearms. For instance, he was involved in selling drugs (habitual users of prohibited drugs, including marijuana, are prohibited from owning firearms), and had a long-ass record (although apparently no felony convictions?). There were a lot of other things that they could have nailed him on, but they pursued a gun charge based on the protective order.
There are plenty of gun laws out there that a reasonable person could see merit in challenging: rules about short-barrel rifles / braces & pot smokers not being able to own guns probably aren’t saving any lives.
The fact that this is the one they go after is just such a demonstration of malintent. There’s good evidence for a relationship between domestic violence and mass shooters.
This should be a bi-partisan slam-dunk. Minimally invasive to law-abiding gun owners, gets guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals. What public good is served in challenging it?
Looks like another commenter mentioned how this hearing is about accused (not convicted) domestic abusers.
He goes on to say how it’s way easier to get a restraining order against someone than it is to prosecute them. This hearing is about preventing the former from owning guns, the latter already isn’t allowed to.
This is on law this is often used against law abiding gun owners. Their marriage is going south and suddenly they are hit by a restraining order. Some cases there is domestic violence going on, but others the spouse is just trying to make their ex’s life bad. Many gun owners have been hit with this and lot their ability to do the legal things they would do with guns even though they weren’t going to harm their ex.
That isn’t to say that everyone hit by a restraining order won’t harm their ex. Only that there are a number of cases where there is no evidence of harm or harm planned but someone lost their guns. (Yes I’m aware that we only get one side of this story and don’t know the truth, but it happens enough that gun owners are worried it could happen to them)
Getting a domestic abuse restraining order requires a court hearing. Spouses “just trying to make their ex’s life bad” don’t have the ability to unilaterally take away their spouse’s firearms. For a fraction of accusations, maybe there is an unjustified restaining order issued, but there is still due process and reasonable expectations that the system will protrct more people than it harms.
There is a court order, but that is very different from a full investigation. Often they hearing is fast and the accused isn’t even in court to defend himself. That is it is not in any way a fair or unbiased trial.
Also guns are expensive, so it’s extra salt in the wound when you try to get them back and the cops say “oops we lost them” (i.e. they walked off into a buddy’s trunk), or even if you do get them back, they’ve been stored in poor conditions and are rusted or otherwise damaged.
That said, they should still be removed if there is a credible threat of violence.
I’m not against disarming dangerous criminals or opposed to this at all but at the point we have identified that they are too dangerous to own a gun why not just imprison them while we’re at it? Taking their guns won’t stop them from victimizing people in other ways.
Because they don’t care about the truth, they believe in gun bans based solely on their emotions. They’re only going to bring suffering upon themselves and those they love by refusing to examine their beliefs and check their emotions.
Don’t sweat them too much. There’s ultimately nothing they could do to take anyone’s weapons away; any meaningful gun ban would trigger the right wing into violence and cause a civil war, and they know that.
I wish the Founders were more explicit about the responsibilities of citizens when they bear arms. Maybe they thought the Militia clause explained it plainly, as citizens needed to be armed in order to protect their towns when asked to, so bearing arms for other purposes clearly wasn’t covered.
Evey other enumerated right in the Constitution is balanced against other responsibilities. The right to Free Speech doesn’t mean you can get away with libel and slander. The right to religious freedom doesn’t mean you can use religion as an excuse to ignore laws. I don’t understand why the right to bear arms is the only one Conservatives see as an absolute right, subordinate to nothing, with no responsibilities attached to it.
so bearing arms for other purposes clearly wasn’t covered.
Not correct. English Common Law was part of the basis for 2A, and English Common Law allowed people to be armed for self defense. (At the time, “people” meant “male land-owners that fit arbitrary definitions of whiteness”. Thankfully, that definition is more expansive now.)
That gun ownership is just presumed to be a given, without any actual responsibility attached to it seems like a purposeful misreading of that amendment. “Well-Regulated Militia” seems to be the main point and requirement of gun ownership. The intent at the time seemed to be, “We don’t have (or want) a standing army, but we need people to own guns in case some shit goes down.” They expected they would need to call upon citizens in a crisis situation and it was a BYOG (Bring Your Own Gun) arrangement.
Well, we have a standing army now and if a citizen wants to volunteer to protect their nation, there’s the National Guard. The whole point behind the 2nd Amendment is gone now. Nothing in the 2nd Amendment talks about owning a gun because you’re a hobbyist and you just like playing around with high-powered rifles. There’s more restrictions around owning/driving cars than there seems to be around owning a gun.
we need people to own guns in case some shit goes down.”
You realize that this is still the case though, right? When someone is actively trying to kick your front door down, how long do you think that it’s going to take the cops to respond? I can tell from personal experience that if you live near Douglas Park in Chicago, the answer is “never”, even after three calls to 911. If you’re not white and call the cops, you’re likely to end up dead.
It should be pointed out that the ‘well-regulated militia’ during the time the nation was founded consisted of regular white men with guns that could be called up on a moment’s notice to fight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minutemen
I’m not sure how regulated they were, but their structure likely influenced the drafting of the second amendment.
One historical review I read before linked the Second Amendment to a popular uprising that had happened not too long before the drafting of the Constitution, the Regulator movement. It was a series of popular uprisings against corruption that happened before the founding of the country, and there was apparently some trouble in assembling an army to put it down. So the Second Amendment was, in effect, a way to help make it easier to put down revolts in the future, which runs completely counter to the narrative that Second amendment supporters give now that the reason they’re supposed to own guns is to protect themselves from a tyrannical government, it was the opposite intent if anything.
Even with the most generous reading of the amendment, the word “regulated” is literally in there.
Regulated in the 1780s regulated meant equipped not controlled. Language changes, but intent does not.
OP already mentioned other enumerated rights were “balanced against other responsibilities.” So given there’s precedent for qualifying these constitutional rights, why not with gun ownership too?
We don’t have absolute freedom of speech. Saying we don’t have freedom of speech because it’s not absolute is simply incorrect.
Well, the regressive judges have always maintained that they love violence against women so, I see them leaning into the 2A nonsense.
