The most grotesque
example came in, where else, Texas, where so much of the right-wing
constitutional litigation originates. Zackey Rahimi went on a shooting spree in
2020 and 2021, firing his gun in several incidents in Arlington, Texas. While
he was doing this, he was subject to a protective order due to domestic
violence against his girlfriend. And there’s a federal law that prohibits
people under such orders to own guns.
The Fifth Circuit
Court of Appeals, seated in New Orleans and now the country’s most aggressively
MAGA-fied, struck down the federal law. “Rahimi,
while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless part of the political community
entitled to the Second Amendment’s guarantees, all other things
equal,” the opinion read. Back then, after all, there were no laws
against domestic violence. It was a feature, not a bug.
The ruling was widely
criticized, and when it was appealed to the Supreme Court, the justices took
the case. That is noteworthy. Four justices must vote to hear an appeal. It
took a decade after Heller before the court would even consider a major
Second Amendment case, and now it is wading back into the controversy less than
two years after Bruen. What gives?