After a slew of judgments whose scope we have not finished analyzing, the Supreme Court will rule in 2024 on another thorny issue.
Can a person charged with domestic violence and subject to a protection order retain their right to own a firearm?
A question of survival for the victims
For about 30 years, federal law has prohibited attackers in domestic violence cases from owning a firearm.
This law was based on frightening statistics and it represented what seems to me to be common sense.
According to National Library of Medicinefemale victims whose abuser has a firearm are five times more likely to be killed than others.
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When one-third of domestic violence-related deaths involve the use of a firearm, one might think that federal law has almost unanimous support. However, the Court of Appeal for the Fifth Circuit recently allowed a Texas drug dealerZackey Rahimi, to keep his gun even though he assaulted and threatened his former partner.
Rahimi is a heavy case. In one year, he participated in five shootings in addition to shooting in the direction of a police officer’s car.
The Fifth Circuit court ruling says he also fired at a fast food restaurant because he was angry that a friend’s credit card had been declined.
The right to bear a weapon would be inviolable
I am one of those who believe that the Constitution, the founding text, must evolve as society evolves. This is what was done by adding many amendments to the first ten drafted in 1791.
The current majority at court, six of the nine members, is however made up of originalists. They read the Constitution strictly and want to stay as close as possible to the text as written by the Founding Fathers.
It will be interesting to watch if they will side with the opinion of the three judges of the court of the fifth circuit for “aberrations that our ancestors would never have accepted” as already pointed out Justice Clarence Thomas.
I cannot predict what the decision of the highest court will be in 2024, but in light of Thomas’ argument in 2022one might think that it will be very difficult to limit the scope of the second amendment.
Thomas reads the constitution like a religious fanatic reads the Bible, reading the past piecemeal while refusing to consider that the world has changed.