Federal Law Deemed To Be Unconstitutional and To Be “An Outlier That Our Ancestors Would Never Have Accepted.”
Our nation’s most conservative federal appeals court, based in New Orleans, used a pro-gun Supreme Court decision to throw out the conviction of a man who had a rifle and a pistol at his home even though he was barred from possessing guns because of a domestic violence restraining order.
Judges in the Fifth Circuit flip-flopped after the Supreme Court decision, even though a three-judge panel had earlier upheld the guilty plea of Zackey Rahimi. The decision strikes down the federal law barring people like Rahimi, who allegedly assaulted his ex-girlfriend, from having guns.
“We conclude that (the law’s) ban on possession of firearms is an ‘outlier’ that our ancestors would never have accepted,’” wrote Judge Cory Wilson, a Trump appointee who has been a member of the National Rifle Association.
Rahimi was arrested after a month-long spree that included shooting at a driver in a car accident, shooting at a constable’s vehicle and firing in the air after a friend’s credit card was declined at a Whataburger restaurant. A three-judge panel in the Fifth Circuit had already ruled against Rahimi, when the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
That 6-3 decision, with all three of Trump’s NRA-endorsed justices voting for it, threw out a two-part test that federal and state courts used since a 2008 Supreme Court decision to reject most Second Amendment arguments of gun rights activists. Under the Bruen decision, the Supreme Court told lower courts to look at historical regulations to determine whether modern gun regulation is constitutionally permissible.
Federal prosecutors argued that Rahimi wasn’t one of the “ordinary, law-abiding citizens” that the Supreme Court justices had in mind in the Bruen decision and that earlier English and American laws authorized disarming dangerous people.
Wilson wrote that Rahimi was included in people in the scope of the Second Amendment and that prosecutors hadn’t made their case with historical comparisons which included the English Militia Act of 1662.
“Under the Government’s reading, Congress could remove ‘unordinary’ or ‘irresponsible’ or ‘non-law abiding’ people – however expediently defined – from the scope of the Second Amendment,” Wilson wrote. “Could speeders be stripped of their right to keep and bear arms? Political nonconformists? People who do not recycle or drive an electric vehicle?”
Wilson was joined in the decision by Judge James Ho, another Trump appointee, and Judge Edith Jones, a Reagan appointee.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department will ask to have the decision reviewed.
“Whether analyzed through the lens of Supreme Court precedent, or of the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment, that statute is constitutional,” Garland said.
Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action, called the decision a death sentence for women and families.
“When someone is able to secure a restraining order, we must do everything possible to keep them and their families safe – not empower the abuser with easy access to firearms.”
The Fifth Circuit has jurisdiction in the states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas and is packed with Republican-appointed judges. It has been called perhaps “America’s most dangerous court” and “a rogue court.”