Posted on 07/17/2023 5:04:55 AM PDT by marktwain
The Supreme Court, on the last day available this session, June 30, 2023, agreed to hear a Second Amendment case, United States v. Rahimi.
This is not good news for Second Amendment supporters, but it is also not terrible news. It signals a willingness in the Court to tolerate some Biden administration resistance to recognizing Second Amendment rights as put forward in the Bruen decision last year.
UNITED STATES V. RAHIMI, ZACKEY
The motion of respondent for leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted. The petition for a writ of certiorari is granted.
The Biden administration pushed to have the Rahimi case moved to the head of the line for a grant of certiorari. The case has been completely mischaracterized in the media. Unfortunately, even Supreme Court justices have been shown to be swayed by sympathetic defendants. Zackey Rahimi is not a sympathetic defendant. He is an acknowledged drug dealer who committed several crimes with firearms. He was convicted of those crimes and sentenced to 73 months in prison. A three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit held another charge of being in possession of a firearm while under a domestic violence restraining order WAS unconstitutional. Rahimi was never convicted of domestic violence. The case was never about domestic violence. It is about due process of law.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammoland.com ...
This is an important case. No clue as to how it is going to fare.
Anyone know?
If they grant that a simple restraining order can nullify a right, then the upcoming social credit scores will be used to take away guns from the law abiding.
On its face, this seems like a minor thing. I can see a substantial long term opportunity for abuse by FedGuv if it’s allowed to stand.
I doesn’t seem likely the court would agree to hear this case if they weren’t leaning towards reversing the circuit court.
It’s a real issue, in NH the Courts have defaulted to rubber stamping domestic violence restraining orders.. facts do matter today in NH. Many horror stories abound of innocent men being destroyed by vindictive women, enabled by lazy lawyers.
That is the thing that worries me. On its face, it seems a minor thing. Convicted drug user, the whole nine yards.
This is an opening for the Left to abuse our Constitutional rights.
The Left is like the open sea pressing on a coastline of dikes. It doesn’t have to guard anywhere, all the time, all it does is continue to attack and press over time at its convenience, looking for a weakness.
And it exploits it.
They apparently see this as a weakness (removal of Constitutional Rights by a court order or edict, and not by due process of some kind) and would exploit it fully if they could.
I have been told many divorce attorneys will not take a case unless the woman files a request for a restraining order. I have been told some attorneys include such a request in a sheaf of papers the woman is asked to sign as part of the attorney taking the case.
I have seen the "restraining order" deliberately abused for political purposes.
A wife, a Mexican national, was threatened with loss of her children if she did not file domestic violence charges. She filed, and the couple went through He!! for two years before it was finally straitened out. The husband was out on the street in nothing flat, with police impounding his guns within an hour of the judge signing the order.
The couple were local whistleblowers.
100% truth.
Yes. That is why I feel completely unsettled by it.
We would hope that perhaps upholding the Circuit Court decision would codify this at a national level (via Supreme Court) and put it to bed.
They can rule however they want, but they won’t disarm us without a real fight.
I don’t believe there are many lawmakers who would sacrifice themselves “for the greater good.”
In her previous appointment, Justice Barrett came down hard against convictions on unrelated felonies automatically resulting in barring of ownership of firearms, and a conviction is a heck of a lot firmer than a restraining order. On the other hand, a restraining order is temporary.
I agree with you. But the it seems the court would have just let the circuit court decision stand without review unless they were considering reversing it. Hope I’m wrong.
Unfortunately I went through this in NH some years ago.. it was not fun.
I did prevail in a matter of weeks, she testified the reason for filing it “ I just wanted him out of the house, so I could move my things out”. Thankfully the judge hammered her.
Today per my Lawyer friends, in the same court, I would be convicted and domestic violence restraining order issued. Rarely per my Lawyer buds are they not issued today, facts be damned.
It’s that bad.
There’s no down side...from the judge’s point of view...for him/her to issue a restraining order.OTOH,if he/she refuses an application and the woman winds up being murdered the next day that would be very bad news for the judge.He/she could even wind up being removed from the bench.
“The case is presented in the Media as about allowing domestic abusers to retain firearms.”
I believe that SCOTUS ruled that the this was not an ex post facto law. My mind is not nuanced enough to understand how Lautenberg isn’t an ex post facto law, but there we are.
Unless they perceive either a conflict with other circuits, or an over-riding wrong.
Oral arguments will be interesting on this case.
I have yet to hear a persuasive argument that it is not a ex post facto law. However, since it is aimed at toxic masculinity it will never be overturned, however much it deserves to be terminated with extreme prejudice.
I have yet to hear a persuasive argument that it is not a ex post facto law.
I don’t buy the idea, but no one cares what I think. But, the same kind of thinking could be used to outlaw any arms possession. “Anyone convicted of (name any crime) , is hereby a prohibited person”. I can’t find anywhere in the Constitution that gives Congress the power to deny Constitutionally-protected rights to Americans, but there we are.
Not in the least, and the former girlfriend testified on his behalf at trial. She had sought the temporary injunction only because she was angry that they had argued and he had left her. The temporary restraining order was dissolved when the case came before a local judge.
Here is the scary part. A black federal judge presided, and the mostly black jury elected a white local college professor as their foreman and was about to convict the poor kid. He had no criminal charges or record and had sought a handgun because he wanted to protect himself and his pregnant girlfriend in the bad neighborhood they lived in.
The only other white on the jury was a pro-gun friend of mine. At first, he was the single no vote, but he gradually swung the jury to acquittal based on a close reading of the jury instructions. A bunch of out of town ATF suits left the courtroom that day unhappy. Apparently, the ATF has been pushing such cases around the country.
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