According to the #Rahimi Court nothing in #Heller created an unbounded right to keep handguns in the home and nothing in #Bruen disturbs the government's authority to regulate firearms possession by those who have been found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others. 7/
Now at the part of the #Rahimi opinion that explains where the Court thinks the lower court, the Fifth Circuit, and the dissent by #ClarenceThomas both err. Both insist on a historical twin to justify a law disarming those who pose a credible threat of domestic violence, when what is required is an analogue. Furthermore, the Fifth Circuit went out of its way to make up a conflict between the domestic violence law and the Constitution.
The #Rahimi Court insists that "historical analysis" will continue to be the order of the day for considering the Constitutional validity of firearms regulation. It emphasizes the narrowness of its holding: "[W]e conclude only this: An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment." This is narrow indeed. 10/
On to the concurrence by #Sotomayor and joined by #Kagan. Sotomoayor emphasizes that she still maintains #Bruen was wrongly decided. But, even under Bruen, #Rahimi is an easy case - prohibiting adjudicated domestic abusers from possessing guns is, under any sense of analogical reasoning, analogical to historical laws regulating firearms possession and use. #ClarenceThomas tries to argue that any difference between historical and today's laws makes them disanalogous. That's ridiculous. 12/
Great passage from #Sotomayor: "Under [#ClarenceThomas] approach, the legislatures of today would be limited not by a distant generation’s determination that such a law was unconstitutional, but by a distant generation’s failure to consider that such a law might be necessary. ... #Rahimi 13/