DOJ Asks Supreme Court To Fast-Track Gun Control Push

(PatriotWise.com) — The Department of Justice (DOJ) has asked the Supreme Court to act quickly and overturn a ruling that struck down a law disallowing gun ownership to those under a domestic violence restraining order. The issue came to the courts when Zackey Rahimi of Texas pled guilty to violating a 1994 law that prohibits people under restraining orders from owning firearms. Rahimi was involved in several gun-related incidents after the restraining order had been applied. The US Court of Appeal however later found that the law that disallowed Rahimi’s gun ownership was unconstitutional in the light of the Supreme Court ruling last year that said any restrictions on Second Amendment rights would need to be considered with the history of the United States and its ancestors in mind. The Court of Appeal said a ban on gun ownership by a person under a restraining order was “an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”

The Supreme Court ruling, known as Bruen, has sent ripples through state legislatures and the courts. It isn’t entirely clear what the Justices intended or how to interpret their ruling. US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar has called for clarity and said overturning the ban at a federal level will lead to an increase in domestic killings. “The presence of a gun in a house with a domestic abuser increases the risk of homicide sixfold,” she said.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) has complained about the lack of guidance on the ruling but it appears that the test being used by the lower courts is whether a parallel to a gun law can be found among regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing, or what the founding fathers would have allowed. Such an approach is open to a wide variety of interpretations and has led to a barrage of Second Amendment cases at a state level since the Supreme Court ruling in Bruen.

Copyright 2023, PatriotWise.com