Clarence Thomas Takes Bold, Lonely Stand For Domestic Abusers' Right To Bear Arms
Supreme Court decides 8-1 against allowing those with domestic violence restraining orders to have guns.
When the Supreme Court decided last week to make machine guns great again by declaring the bump stock ban unconstitutional, some of us weren’t so sure about how US v. Rahimi was going to shake out.
Thankfully, however, reason has prevailed and the court voted 8-1 against allowing those under domestic violence restraining orders to have firearms, determining that the 1994 federal statute outlined in Section 922(g)(8) of the US Code is allowable despite the holy Second Amendment.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, noting that, historically, we have taken firearms away from people considered to be a threat to public safety.
“When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment,” the court held. “Since the Founding, the Nation’s firearm laws have included regulations to stop individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms. As applied to the facts here, Section 922(g)(8) fits within this tradition.”
Interestingly, the Court also held that because the Second Amendment covers more than just the muskets and other weapons that were around at the time the Constitution was written, it must also allow for updated regulations as well.
“The reach of the Second Amendment is not limited only to those arms that were in existence at the Founding,” the decision read. Rather, it “extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not [yet] in existence. By that same logic, the Second Amendment permits more than just regulations identical to those existing in 1791.”
Huh! I mean, I wouldn’t actually consider the first part logical — particularly since I maintain that the Second Amendment was meant to establish militias as an alternative to a standing army at a time when people were very against having a standing army (and to establish that it was the government’s responsibility to train and arm them — thus “well-regulated”), and not as an individual right which did not even exist until Antonin Scalia wrote the opinion in Heller — but at least they arrived at the right place … this time.
The lone dissenting vote, it should not surprise you, came from Clarence Thomas. And it was bad. Real bad.
Thomas’s actual argument, based on the new and deeply ridiculous “history and tradition” standard, is that any law regarding guns (possibly anything else!) is unconstitutional if the problem existed in the 1800s and was handled differently then.
You know, because we did such a great job dealing with domestic violence in those days!
§922(g)(8) addresses a societal problem—the risk of interpersonal violence—“that has persisted since the 18th century,” yet was addressed “through [the] materially different means” of surety laws. Id., at 26. Surety laws were, in a nutshell, a fine on certain behavior. If a person threatened someone in his community, he was given the choice to either keep the peace or forfeit a sum of money. Surety laws thus shared the same justification as §922(g)(8), but they imposed a far less onerous burden. The Government has not shown that §922(g)(8)’s more severe approach is consistent with our historical tradition of firearm regulation.
So, just to be very clear here, his solution is to give domestic abusers a choice between not shooting their victims and paying a fine?
Like, in Clarence Thomas’s ideal 1800s world, a woman would get a restraining order against her abusive ex-boyfriend and said abusive ex-boyfriend would be told, “Sir, you have a choice here. Either you can not kill your ex or you can pay us $1000 and go on about your business.” That seems like a great solution, especially for those more inclined towards the murder/suicide route.
Now, call me crazy, but in literally no other context would any normal person say that our solutions to things in the 1800s were preferable to our solutions today — particularly given how many of them involved arsenic. In fact, if we want to get real about it, an 1800s “solution” to the problem of domestic violence would have most likely involved a husband sending his wife to the doctor to be treated with a vibrator for her “hysteria.”
Oh! Here’s another 1800s-era solution, right on my very own mantle! All this time I’ve been taking iron pills for anemia when I could have been downing strychnine!
According to an old advertisement, “it is agreeable, palatable and entirely acceptable to the most delicate stomachs and hence can be given for long periods without disturbing digestion.”
If Clarence Thomas wants to live in the 1800s, then he should get himself a damn penny farthing bike and go join up with that weird hipster couple that lived their whole lives like they were in the Victorian era.
More seriously here — we did not take domestic violence seriously in the 1800s. In fact, we didn’t even have domestic violence shelters until the 1970s. It wasn’t talked about. Child abuse was, similarly, not really talked about until then either, particularly child sexual abuse. People were not sitting around in the 1800s, seriously thinking of the best way to deal with these problems and coming up with “sureties,” because they didn’t care that much and didn’t really see them as problems in need of solving.
We have the benefit of more thought, more research, of greater understanding of social ills and what is necessary to address them. Why not use it?
PREVIOUSLY:
My state, Western Australia, has had some shocking domestic violence murders in the past few years, with legally owned guns. The Government's just passed legislation to allow legally owned guns to be seized from accused DV perpetrators, if the victim expresses fears for their safety.
Oh, and you get *convicted* of DV? No
more guns for you, ever. And everyone now has a maximum of five guns anyway*, because why the fuck does a private citizen need more than five guns???
I'm so sorry, Americans.
* Common sense exemptions for things like gun shops and ranges.
It's as if Clarence Thomas woke up one morning and decided he could not be a POC in this country, and so went about his day insisting that he is not, just like the emperor had no clothes but insisted that all acknowledge his brilliance in fashion. Does he hate himself that much, or is it deflected to all of us? He has brought shame to the SCOTUS, squatting there.