The government can disarm "dangerous individuals" without violating the Second Amendment, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the Supreme Court on Tuesday. J. Matthew Wright, the lawyer arguing the other side of United States v. Rahimi, agreed with that general principle. But he did not agree that the federal law Prelogar was defending, which criminalizes gun possession by people who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders, fits within that tradition.
Neither did the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which last February ruled that the law, 18 USC 922(g)(8), was not "consistent with this Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation"—the constitutional test that the Supreme Court established last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. Writing for a unanimous panel, 5th Circuit Judge Cory T. Wilson noted that Section 922(g)(8) "works to disarm not only individuals who are threats to other individuals but also every party to a domestic proceeding (think: divorce court) who, with no history of violence whatever, becomes subject to a domestic restraining order that contains boilerplate language" meeting the law's criteria.
