|
John,
Last February, in United States v. Rahimi, the Texas Fifth District Court of Appeals declared a 30-year-old federal law unconstitutional and ruled that a man who had a string of domestic abuse convictions still had a constitutional right to own a gun. How could a judge have arrived at this nonsensical decision?
The appeals court used the faulty reasoning of last year’s inordinately flawed majority decision, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which struck down New York’s concealed carry law. In that 6-3 decision, Thomas wrote that to regulate guns in any manner, “the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition.”
In the year since then, over a dozen gun laws have been overturned for failing to find an historical “analogue” demonstrating that 18th century lawmakers had a similar restriction in mind. The fact that violence by men against women in the home was largely accepted, if it was even reported, in the 1700s should have no bearing on the validity of a modern-day law protecting survivors of domestic abuse and their families.
Yet the Bruen decision cast a long shadow over every gun control law in the country, as prosecutors scrambled to find historical precedents from over two hundred years ago for situations that are immediately abhorrent to modern sensibilities.
Now that the Supreme Court has heard oral arguments in this case, its first major gun-related case this session, we need to send a public message that critical gun safety protections must not be reversed. Will you join us by adding your name now?
The good news is that, based on the justices’ responses to the oral arguments, it appears unlikely they will uphold the Fifth District’s extremist position. But how the Supreme Court arrives at its decision will shape how domestic violence survivors are protected, and how other gun-related cases are decided in the future.
A majority of justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, seemed to support arguments that “dangerous” individuals are outside the scope of the Second Amendment, and that lawmakers have considerable discretion to determine who is too dangerous to possess a firearm. If the Court bases their decision on this framework, rather than the “historical precedent” framework offered by Justice Thomas last term, it will give federal and state lawmakers greater power to pass critical gun safety laws moving forward.
The Supreme Court is aware it is under intense scrutiny. As the Court forms its decision in United States v. Rahimi, we need to create public pressure in support of this 30-year-old law and keep guns out of the hands of perpetrators of domestic violence.
Encourage the justices to overturn this dangerous lower court ruling. Add your name in support of common sense, life-saving gun laws now.
Thank you for showing your support for survivors of domestic violence today.
- DFA National Organizing Team
Democracy for America
Advocacy Fund
|
