Since Bruen, lower court judges applying its test have been, to use a legal term of art, all over the place, a fact repeatedly highlighted during oral arguments by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who sought some, any, guidance on how the court should understand its own ruling. Again, lower courts are equally confused. One court, for example, decided that Florida’s ban on the sale of guns to 18-to-20-year-olds passed constitutional muster; another concluded that a federal law disarming people convicted of certain crimes perhaps did not.
A few judges have publicly aired their frustrations with the sudden analytical primacy of law-office history. “We are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791,” wrote one in 2022. “Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication.” Another castigated the court for creating a game of “historical Where’s Waldo” that entails “mountains of work for district courts that must now deal with Bruen-related arguments in nearly every criminal case in which a firearm is found.”
Just goes to show how shitty, stupid, and partisan this Trump Supreme Court is.
I’m an extremely pro-gun type of dude, but even I’m having a really hard time understanding why this is even a question.
The actions of this Zackey Rahimi dillweed outlined at the beginning are almost certainly felony level offenses. We have agreed for quite a long time that convicted felons cannot own firearms, let alone violent ones. Shooting at cars because of road rage? Shooting at the wrong car because of road rage? Capping off in a Whatabugger because your credit card was declined? I know we like to roll our eyes and make snide comments about “responsible gun owners.” This asshat is not a responsible gun owner. There should have already been plenty of due process before this to take his guns away – being convicted for any of the above offenses would have covered it – long before we got to the restraining order phase. What I want to know is how the hell he still had a gun after the first offense to go on and commit all the others. (And if he had that gun illegally at the time to begin with, why he was apparently not jammed up for it.)
Take solace in the fact that the justices are likely to uphold this law!
… and somewhat less solace in the fact that one of the justices (I think it was Jackson?) said this was the easy case and they have much hornier Bruen cases in the pipeline.
… and even less solace in the fact that a supposedly “easy” case like this one still made it to the supreme court because of how much a shitshow the Bruen decision is.
It’s a common failing of the justice system. There aren’t enough judges and lawyers to handle the case load in a reasonable time frame. This leads to most cases being plea deals, because it’s better to spend 6 months locked up than a year waiting for a trial date. This inevitably leads to a handful of people that should have been locked up long ago being free to commit more crimes until they finally go to far for a district attorney to ignore.
I mean it’s pretty easy to see why this is a question.
Trump’s supreme court, the highlander quickening geniuses, issued a decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen that and I quote
Basically requiring gun laws to have some analogue in to laws linking back to when the founders first wrote the amendment and if there’s no analogue, and in this case it’s all about domestic violence wasn’t against the law and therefore if the supreme court doesn’t want to look like god damn clowns, they should rule that this law is unconstitutional.