About 40 minutes into Tuesday’s Supreme Court argument asking whether a federal law prohibiting domestic abusers from owning guns is unconstitutional, Chief Justice John Roberts asked J. Matthew Wright, the lawyer arguing against the law, a question that no attorney ever wants to hear.
“You don’t have any doubt that your client is a dangerous person, do you?” the Chief asked Wright.
There is, indeed, very little doubt that Wright’s client, Zackey Rahimi, is a very dangerous man. A Texas court determined that Rahimi “has committed family violence” and that he “represents a credible threat to the physical safety” of his ex-girlfriend or other members of her family.
If anything, that’s a massive understatement. Rahimi allegedly hit his ex-girlfriend in a parking lot, and then fired a gun at a bystander who witnessed the fight. He then allegedly called the ex-girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone that he’d assaulted her. And he’s accused of committing multiple other crimes where he fired a gun — in one of them, he allegedly fired into a man’s home with an AR-15 rifle.
The specific question before the Supreme Court in United States v. Rahimi is whether a federal law makes it a crime to possess a firearm if a court has determined they are a threat to their “intimate partner,” their child, or their partner’s child violates the Second Amendment.
Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito appeared open to the possibility that this law could violate the Constitution.
And, while Alito at times made arguments that seemed lifted from men’s rights activists — such as a claim that courts frequently impose domestic violence restraining orders without considering if they are warranted — even he seemed uncomfortable with some of Wright’s arguments by the end of the Court hearing.
The biggest question in Rahimi, in other words, does not appear to be whether the Supreme Court will reverse a right-wing federal…
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