It wasn’t enough for the Supreme Court to gut abortion rights last year. The justices also unleashed a Second Amendment ruling with potentially deadly effects.
On Thursday, we got a reminder of how perilous that ruling can be, with an appeals court decision that struck down a federal law that keeps guns out of the hands of people under domestic violence restraining orders.
How did we reach this menacing moment?
The deranged logic is that if past generations didn’t see fit to address a problem, we’re doomed to suffer today.
Well, according to the Fifth Circuit, the nation’s most right-wing appeals court, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, that result is required by the Supreme Court’s 6-3 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
In Bruen, decided in June, the Republican-appointed majority not only expanded the right to carry guns in public, but also set forth a test that strikes down gun regulations unless, according to Justice Clarence Thomas’ majority opinion, they’re “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” The deranged logic is that if past generations didn’t see fit to address a problem, we’re doomed to suffer today.
Dissenting in Bruen in his final term on the court, Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, took stock of the ruling’s predictable consequences, pointing to, among other things, a study that found women are five times more likely to be killed by abusive partners with access to guns. Breyer noted his “fear that the Court’s interpretation ignores these significant dangers and leaves States without the ability to address them.”
Women are five times more likely to be killed by abusive partners with access to guns.
So it’s both absurd and unsurprising that Bruen led a three-judge Fifth Circuit panel Thursday — two Trump appointees and a Reagan appointee, by the way — to strike down the law keeping guns from abusers…
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