Skip to content
Part of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Some press pieces reviewing SCOTUS argument in Rahimi Second Amendment case

As previewed in this post, the Supreme Court today heard oral argument in US v. Rahimi to consider how its (new originalist) Second Amendment test applies to the federal criminal firearm prohibition of gun possession by persons subject to domestic violence restraining orders, 18 USC § 922(g)(8).  The 90+ minute oral argument (and its transcript) is available at this link.  As highlighted by the press coverage, most SCOTUS watchers expect the Court to uphold the federal law against a Second Amendment challenge:

From CBS News, “Supreme Court wary of striking down 1994 law protecting domestic violence victims in high-stakes gun case

From Reuters, “US Supreme Court leans toward allowing domestic-violence gun curbs

From Vox, “The Supreme Court appears poised to rein in its worst decision on guns

From The Washington Post, “Court seems likely to allow gun bans for those under protective orders

Upon listening to the oral argument, I share the view that there seems to be a majority of Justices (and perhaps even all the Justices) who are prepared to rework the Bruen originalist approach to the Second Amendment to uphold the federal criminal firearm prohibition in Rahimi.  But I still found the entire oral argument quite interesting, and I was especially struck by the claim by Rahimi’s lawyer that there were no complete criminal bans on the possession of guns by certain people until 1968.  If originalism as a mode of constitutional interpretation really cared about history, that would seem to be a quite significant bit of history for resolving this case.  We shall see in a few months if history and originalism really matters in this context.