Experts say United States v Rahimi may be matter of life and death for thousands of abuse victims, majority women, and their families

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.

  • HelixDab2@lemm.ee
    313·
    1 year ago

    Inaccurate headline.

    SCOTUS will hear a case about whether people accused of domestic abuse–but not convicted of any offense–and subject to a protection order are permitted to own firearms.

    Why does that matter?

    The evidentiary bar is much, much lower to get a protection order than it is to convict a person of a domestic violence offense, including misdemeanor domestic violence offenses. Because it’s not a criminal proceeding, and because the stakes are generally much lower for the accused, it can be considerably easier to get a protection order from a judge than it is to get a criminal conviction of any offense.

    That’s not a good basis for eliminating rights.

    If you want to take the guns from domestic abusers, then for fucks’ sake, prosecute them. Even a misdemeanor conviction is sufficient to bar someone from owning firearms for life, or until the conviction is vacated.

    EDIT - the defendant in this case did plenty of other things that should have gotten him barred from owning firearms. For instance, he was involved in selling drugs (habitual users of prohibited drugs, including marijuana, are prohibited from owning firearms), and had a long-ass record (although apparently no felony convictions?). There were a lot of other things that they could have nailed him on, but they pursued a gun charge based on the protective order.