The US supreme court will hear oral arguments on Tuesday in a case which gun and domestic violence prevention groups are warning could be a matter of life and death for thousands of abuse victims and their families.
Tuesday’s hearing on United States v Rahimi is seen as one of the most consequential cases with which the nine justices will grapple this term. At stake is how far the new hard-right supermajority of the court will go in unraveling the US’s already lax gun laws, even as the country reels from a spate of devastating mass shootings.
Also at stake, say experts, are the lives of thousands of Americans, overwhelmingly women, threatened with gun violence at the hands of their current or former intimate partners.
There are plenty of gun laws out there that a reasonable person could see merit in challenging: rules about short-barrel rifles / braces & pot smokers not being able to own guns probably aren’t saving any lives.
The fact that this is the one they go after is just such a demonstration of malintent. There’s good evidence for a relationship between domestic violence and mass shooters.
This should be a bi-partisan slam-dunk. Minimally invasive to law-abiding gun owners, gets guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals. What public good is served in challenging it?
Looks like another commenter mentioned how this hearing is about accused (not convicted) domestic abusers.
He goes on to say how it’s way easier to get a restraining order against someone than it is to prosecute them. This hearing is about preventing the former from owning guns, the latter already isn’t allowed to.
“Put guns back in the hands of stalkers” is all I’m hearing here.
Probably because you spend too much time on the internet.
The case is being run by a public defender this isn’t a legal activism play.
I’m not against disarming dangerous criminals or opposed to this at all but at the point we have identified that they are too dangerous to own a gun why not just imprison them while we’re at it? Taking their guns won’t stop them from victimizing people in other ways.
Because they don’t care about the truth, they believe in gun bans based solely on their emotions. They’re only going to bring suffering upon themselves and those they love by refusing to examine their beliefs and check their emotions.
Don’t sweat them too much. There’s ultimately nothing they could do to take anyone’s weapons away; any meaningful gun ban would trigger the right wing into violence and cause a civil war, and they know that.