Domestic Abusers Can Now Own Guns Too, US Appeals Court Rules

A federal law that prohibits people subject to domestic violence restraining orders from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, the court ruled.

Latest victory for gun rights advocates since the Supreme Court’s decision last June granting people to carry firearms outside the home. 

New Delhi: The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday struck down the a decades-old law that prohibits those with domestic violence restraining orders from possessing guns.

The court said that the federal law contradicts the “nation's historical tradition” of access to firearms even if they aren’t model citizens.

The court’s opinion was written by Judge Cory Todd Wilson, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump. He was joined by Reagan-appointee Judge Edith Jones and Judge James Ho, another Trump appointee.

It is the latest victory for gun rights advocates since the Supreme Court’s decision last June granting people to carry firearms outside the home, Reuters reported. The ruling dismantles a gun restriction in the wake of the Supreme Court’s expansion of Second Amendment rights last year in the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen decision.

The ruling states that said that the federal law targeting those believed to pose a domestic violence threat could not stand under the Bruen test, which requires gun laws to have a historical analogy to the firearm regulations in place at the time of the Constitution’s framing,

“Through that lens, we conclude that (the law’s) ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier’ that our ancestors would never have accepted,” the 5th Circuit said.

The court threw out the guilty plea and six-year prison sentence for Zackey Rahimi, who admitted to possessing guns found in his Texas home after prosecutors said he participated in five shootings in December 2020 and January 2021.

Rahimi had been under a restraining order since February 2020, following his alleged assault of a former girlfriend.

The 5th Circuit is based in New Orleans, and its decision now applies in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, according the Reuters.