Supreme Court seems likely to uphold gun law

Ruling would allow government to disarm those under domestic violence orders; justices skirt around new test

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court seemed ready Tuesday to rule the government may disarm people under domestic violence orders, limiting the sweep of last year’s blockbuster decision that vastly expanded gun rights.

Several conservative justices, during a lively if largely onesided argument, seemed to be searching for a narrow rationale that would not require them to retreat substantially from a new Second Amendment test the court announced last year in giving people a broad right to arm themselves in public. Under the new standard, the justices said courts must look to history to assess the constitutionality of gun control measures.

But conservative justices seemed prepared Tuesday to accept a judicial finding of dangerousness in the context of domestic violence proceedings was sufficient to support a federal law making it a crime for people subject to such orders to possess guns — even if there was no measure from the founding era precisely like the one at issue in the case.

“Someone who poses a risk of domestic violence is dangerous,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, adding other limits on gun rights posed harder questions.

The liberal justices, by contrast, appeared to want to use the case to revisit the history-based test. “What’s the point of going to the founding era?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked.

The ramifications of the court’s decision, expected by June, could extend far beyond domestic abuse and yield a major statement on the meaning of the court’s ruling last year.

Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, defending the law, said there was ample historical precedent for disarming people who were not, in the language of earlier Second Amendment decisions, law-abiding and responsible. Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito appeared consistently skeptical of Prelogar’s defense of the law, stressing the protection order at issue was the product of an abbreviated civil proceeding.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, for his part, asked a series of questions sketching out a minimalist ruling upholding the law, suggesting the case before the court was an easy one.

“We actually have a finding of a credible threat,” he said. “The dangerousness argument seems most apparent there.”

The two other members of the court appointed by President Donald Trump — Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh — made similar comments. Kavanaugh, for instance, noted government statistics showing more than 75,000 attempts to buy firearms by people subject to domestic violence restraining orders were rejected under the federal background check program.

There was general agreement the combination of domestic strife and firearms can be lethal. The Supreme Court itself recognized this in a 2014 majority opinion. “All too often, the only difference between a battered woman and a dead woman is the presence of a gun,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court, quoting a lawmaker.

The argument came as the nation grapples with a seemingly unending series of mass shootings, including a recent one in Maine that left 18 people dead.

In last year’s decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court struck down by a 6-3 vote a New York law that put strict limits on carrying guns outside the home. It also established a new legal standard, one whose reliance on historical practices has sown confusion as courts have struggled to apply it, with some judges sweeping aside gun control laws that have been on the books for decades.

The majority opinion in Bruen, written by Thomas, said courts must now judge restrictions on gun rights by turning to early American history as a guide. “The government must demonstrate,” he wrote, “that the regulation is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”