The U.S. Supreme Court’s anti-gun opinion (read the full opinion here) from the Rahimi case may be the most devastating opinion in decades to ever come from the Court on 2nd Amendment issues, and Red Flag laws may be the biggest issue at hand.
Rahimi himself was not a good person. So, unlike liberals who touted a criminal like George Floyd for an entire summer as the hero of their movement, gun owners should not be pretending like Rahimi was anything other than a bad guy.
However, the big concern about the Rahimi case is that the Supreme Court’s opinion was 8 to 1 (with only Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting), and the court justified its decision by saying that it’s okay to disarm someone if they are deemed “dangerous” based on no actual historical cases.
For gun owners, the big concern is that the Court may be indicating how they’ll come down on Red Flag Gun Confiscation Orders.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the opinion for the Court, and he said in justification for their opinion:
Since the founding, our Nation’s firearm laws have included provisions preventing individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms. As applied to the facts of this case, [the statute] fits comfortably within this tradition.”
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The Court seems to indicate that it is okay to disarm citizens if they are deemed dangerous by themselves or someone else. What, then, will they have to say about Red Flag Gun Confiscation orders?
Won’t the Supreme Court use the same justifications for Red Flag laws?
Maybe not, but the outlook doesn’t look good for gun owners right now. It may take state battles as the only means of stopping them.
At least Justice Clarence Thomas was smart enough to understand the true meaning of the 2nd Amendment.
In his very lengthy dissent, he said, in part,
The question before us is not whether Rahimi and others like him can be disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment. Instead, the question is whether the Government can strip the Second Amendment right of anyone subject to a protective order — even if he has never been accused or convicted of a crime. It cannot,” he said.
The Court and Government do not point to a single historical law revoking a citizen’s Second Amendment right based on possible interpersonal violence.
The Government has not borne its burden to prove that [the statute] is consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.
The Framers and ratifying public understood ‘that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty.
Yet, in the interest of ensuring the Government can regulate one subset of society, today’s decision puts at risk the Second Amendment rights of many more. I respectfully dissent.”
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How is it that only one Justice understands this? If you aren’t charged or convicted of a crime, how does the government think it can disarm its citizens?
Perhaps a quote from Thomas Jefferson would have been sufficient in helping the other eight Justices understand how the Founders thought about the right to keep and bear arms when he said, “No free man shall ever be disbarred the use of arms.”
