By Kate Anderson
The Supreme Court will take up a case involving the rights of convicted domestic abusers to own a firearm, according to an order list released Friday.
The case “United States v. Rahimi, Zackey” involves a convicted felon, Zackey Rahimi, who was suspected of several shootings in Arlington, Texas, in 2020 and 2021 and had a restraining order against him from his former girlfriend, according to the Washington Examiner. Rahimi was convicted but appealed against a Biden administration law in 2022 barring domestic abusers from owning a gun and the Supreme Court agreed Friday to hear the case.
Rahimi assaulted his former girlfriend in 2019, prompting her to file a restraining order, according to The New York Times. He ignored the court order and threatened other women before committing five separate shootings, leading officers to find several guns in his home in violation of the law.
During his trial, Rahimi attempted to argue that he was within his rights to have the firearms, but his claims were rejected and he was sentenced to over six years in prison, according to the Times. He appealed the decision to the Fifth Circuit, which initially ruled against him in June 2022 but later reversed the decision in March and ruled that the law did indeed violate the second amendment since there was no historical precedent.
Rahimi rests his defense on the Supreme Court’s decision in New York Rifle and Pistol Assn. v. Bruen, where justices determined that a New York law banning citizens from carrying firearms without a license was unconstitutional, according to the text. The court determined that the government cannot impose undue restrictions on a person’s right to bear arms under the broad scope of public safety and argued that such restrictions are only proper in “sensitive areas.”
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