Justices' devotion to gun rights faces a major test today

WASHINGTON » The big gun rights case the Supreme Court is set to hear today presents the justices with a tricky problem.

They must start to clear up the confusion they created last year in a landmark decision that revolutionized Second Amendment law by saying that long-ago historical practices are all that matter in assessing challenges to gun laws. That standard has left lower courts in turmoil as they struggle to hunt down references to obscure or since-forgotten regulations.

Judging the constitutionality of gun laws has turned into a “game of historical `Where's Waldo?'” Judge Holly A. Brady of the U.S. District Court in Fort Wayne, Indiana, wrote in December.

But this week's case is an imperfect vehicle for achieving greater clarity about the reach of the Second Amendment.

It concerns a drug dealer from Texas with a history of armed violence who was convicted of violating a federal law aimed at preventing domestic abuse. A conservative appeals court with a reputation for extremism struck down that law, saying it had been unable to find a suitable historical analogue.

The case is, in other words, not an attractive one for groups seeking to expand Second Amendment rights. And the justices will consider it as the nation is still reeling from the deadliest mass shooting of the year, one that left 18 people dead in Lewiston, Maine.

The Supreme Court's new case started in 2019, when Zackey Rahimi assaulted his girlfriend and threatened to shoot her if she told anyone, leading her to obtain a restraining order. A judge found that Rahimi has “committed family violence” and that such violence “was likely to occur again.”

The order suspended Rahimi's handgun license and prohibited him from possessing firearms. But Rahimi defied the order in flagrant fashion, according to court records.

He threatened a different woman with a gun, leading to charges of assault with a deadly weapon. Then, in the space of two months, he opened fire in public five times.

The shootings led to a search warrant of Rahimi's home, which uncovered weapons, and he was charged with violating a federal law that makes it a crime for people subject to domestic violence orders to possess guns.

After a judge rejected his Second Amendment challenge to the law, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to more than six years in prison. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at first affirmed his conviction in a short decision, rejecting the argument that the law violated the Second Amendment in a footnote.

But the appeals court reversed course after the Supreme Court decided Bruen, rejecting a variety of old laws identified by the government as possible analogues, saying they did not sufficiently resemble the one concerning domestic violence orders.