“A federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, a conservative-leaning appeals court ruled Thursday.”
The ruling is the latest significant decision dismantling a gun restriction in the wake of the Supreme Court’s expansion of Second Amendment rights last year in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision.
It seems that the six black-robed Supreme Court Taliban [led by Clarence, husband of Ginnie Thomas, that wacky rabid right wing weasel] set a new standard in US jurisprudence with the Bruen ruling, which struck down a New York gun law that placed restrictions on carrying a concealed handgun outside the home, and opened the door to further expansion of “gun rights” shoved down our throats, like this new ruling February 2.
Clarence opined that going forward, the government “may not simply posit that the regulation promotes an important interest,” instead he said the judges must look to text and history when deciding whether a law passes muster. “Only if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s unqualified command,” Thomas said. “We too agree, and now hold, consistent with Heller and McDonald, that the Second and Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry a hand- gun for self-defense outside the home.”
And so, here we are, merrily sliding down the slippery slope to make possession of any weapon, any time, by anybody, LEGAL. And incidentally, to make it easier to literally get away with murder. I mean, if you are a white man, of course. This is entirely consistent with with the historical tradition of our ancestors, I mean the ones who were Confederate seditionists, right?
“The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals said on Thursday that the federal law targeting those believed to pose a domestic violence threat could not stand under the Bruen test, which requires that gun laws have a historical analogy to the firearm regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing.”
— Which would be fine if your ex was stalking you with a historical musket because you could be on a plane to Cancun before he could load the gun.
“Through that lens, we conclude that (the law’s) ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier’ that our ancestors would never have accepted,” the 5th Circuit said.
Let’s think about that for a minute, okay? Being ‘ancestors’ they are long dead and who do they think they are and why do we care what they would have accepted? Did I ask for their opinion? No, I did not.
“The 5th Circuit panel was not persuaded by the historical parallels put forward by the US Justice Department, which was defending the conviction of a person who possessed a firearm while under a domestic violence restraining order that had been imposed after he was accused of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. The Justice Department argued that the domestic violence law was analogous to 17th-and 18th century regulations that disarmed ‘dangerous’ persons.”
“The purpose of these ‘dangerousness’ laws was the preservation of political and social order, not the protection of an identified person from the specific threat posed by another,” the 5th Circuit opinion read. “Therefore, laws disarming ‘dangerous’ classes of people are not ‘relevantly similar’” to “serve as historical analogues.”
But it doesn’t have much to do with protecting the rights or physical persons of vulnerable people today, does it? Because "domestic violence" was never a big deal in US history anyway, and this new ruling strikes down a law that merely “promotes an interest” rather than promoting the so-called “rights" of violent men.
So — preserving the “political and social order”/enshrining the quaint patriarchal opinions of men who lived in a different world 300 years ago — is important, but preserving the lives of abused humans isn’t? Well, I’m glad we got that settled.
Did you know it was that same logic that one of the other mummified jurists, Samuel Alito, used to bring down Roe vs. Wade last year?
In his draft opinion which somebody [ahem] apparently leaked at a far-right fancy dress party, he justified overturning Roe [which of course is about a woman’s control over her body] based on the writings of Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century English jurist whose reasonings have caused enduring damage to women for hundreds of years.
The "marital rape exemption" [ the legal notion that a married woman cannot be raped by her husband] — was wrought by Hale. Also a classic instruction to jurors to be skeptical of reports of rape. And othen there was that time he sentenced two women to death during the Salem witch trials.
Excellent qualifications for a guy who is deciding what kind of medical care you — or your daughter or sister or wife — should be able to obtain in 21st century America, am I right?
But our authoritarian overlords in the Republican Party claim it’s all about FREEDOM, their contrived, imaginary right to gun down anyone they don’t like and become a little tin god and hero to impotent incels everywhere (Rittenhouse ring a bell?).
But freedom for women — not so much. After all, back in the 1700s, women didn’t even have the right to vote. As late as the 1970s, we could not get a credit card in our own name, be guaranteed that we would not be fired for getting pregnant, take legal action against workplace sexual harassment, or refuse to have sex with our husbands.
We didn’t have the right to contraception until 1965 and the Griswold decision. Even that was only for married couples. You know what the grand agenda for the Republican party is this year? To destroy Medicare and Social Security, of course — that’s clear. But it’s also to force women to live under the repressive rule of fundamentalist theology, to an era when we were merely vessels for the whims of men. And fascist vigilante men enforced their will with guns — just like the brownshirts did and “moralty police” still do in Saudi Arabia. It turned out to be so easy for scotus to erase Roe and wow did they get off on that. Wanna take bets on what’s next?
Don’t say “it can’t happen here” — because you are watching it happen here.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/02/politics/domestic-violence-guns-fifth-circuit/index.html
https://www.propublica.org/article/abortion-roe-wade-alito-scotus-hale
Your comment that on the Republican agenda is ‘clearly’ to destroy Medicare & SS is simply a lie. Blatant misinformation, something the left has mastered! Why don’t you prove I’m wrong by finding more than one GOP - who’s currently in the House or Senate- that has publicly confirmed your obvious hyperbole. And no, someone saying ‘looking into them’ doesn’t come close to dismantling them! I’ll wait…since I figure you’ll come back with your answer on the 12th……………….
The 12th of never!!!
It goes without saying that this, and many recent decisions fly in the face of actual reason and reduce that court to a poor Monty Python substitute.
What a load of pandering ridiculousness.
Of course, the entirety of the case is also predicated on a mortally flawed interpretation of the 2nd Amendment.