(RightWing.org) – The rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment are vast. The current Supreme Court has attempted to define and clarify those rights. However, the high court has now agreed to hear a case that could expand those rights even further.
The Case
The Supreme has agreed to hear a case involving a domestic abuser and guns. In 2019, Zackey Rahimi attacked his girlfriend and then told her he would shoot her if she told anyone what he did. She asked a Texas court for a restraining order, and a judge granted her request. Rahimi was told that he was not allowed to go within 200 yards of the victim, and he was also prohibited from owning a firearm.
Rahimi was subsequently involved in five shootings, court records reveal. In December 2020, he reportedly fired shots into a residence after he sold drugs to an individual. The next day, he was in a motor vehicle accident, got out of his vehicle, and fired at the other driver before fleeing the scene. He returned to the accident scene in another car and then shot at the other driver’s vehicle again. On December 22, he fired at a constable’s vehicle, and then two weeks later, he fired multiple shots in the air after an incident at a burger restaurant.
Police later arrested Rahimi. A federal grand jury indicted him for possessing a firearm while he was under a restraining order for domestic violence, a violation of federal law. He pleaded guilty to the charges. Rahimi later appealed his case on the grounds that the federal law prohibiting domestic abusers from possessing a firearm is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s 2022 precedent in the case of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in his favor, citing the Bruen precedent. President Joe Biden’s administration is now appealing the decision to the Supreme Court, and the justices have agreed to hear the case.
The 5th Circuit Decision
Under the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling, the justices established a new test the courts should use to determine whether a law prohibiting firearms is a violation of the Second Amendment. That is whether a law is rooted in “history and tradition.” The ruling expanded on the 2010 District of Columbia v. Heller decision, which ruled the right to own a gun is not tied to a person’s service in a state militia.
In the Rahimi case, Judge Cory Wilson wrote the majority opinion, stating that while he was “hardly a model citizen,” the Second Amendment guarantees him the right to own a gun because the SCOTUS has stated in Heller that it’s a “right exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.”
If the Supreme Court upholds the Fifth Circuit ruling, individuals who are the subjects of restraining orders in domestic violence cases would be allowed to own firearms.
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