Fifth Circuit Defends Sacred Right Of Wife Beaters To Carry Guns

This country man, I don't know.

The Fifth Circuit's reign of terror continues apace with yesterday's order giving domestic abusers the right to keep their guns. It was handed down by two Trump appointees, Judges Cory Wilson and James Ho, and Judge Edith Jones, a FedSoc loon installed by Reagan who is somehow only 73. It's a fucking catastrophe, and the best we can hope for is that the current Supreme Court hates criminals more than it loves guns, since clearly they will never be moved by the need to protect victims of domestic violence.

Here's how the court describes the complainant in this case:

Between December 2020 and January 2021, Rahimi was involved in five shootings in and around Arlington, Texas. On December 1, after selling narcotics to an individual, he fired multiple shots into that individual’s residence. The following day, Rahimi was involved in a car accident. He exited his vehicle, shot at the other driver, and fled the scene. He returned to the scene in a different vehicle and shot at the other driver’s car. On December 22, Rahimi shot at a constable’s vehicle. On January 7, Rahimi fired multiple shots in the air after his friend’s credit card was declined at a Whataburger restaurant.

Would it shock you to learn that this sweetheart had a pending protective order against him,? Would you faint dead to learn that a guy who was violent with women went on to commit other crimes?

You would not! Because you're a sentient person, and you weren't born yesterday. (Unless you were born yesterday, in which case, congratulations on your precocious reading skills.)

Indeed, after he allegedly assaulted his ex-partner, a Texas state court issued a restraining order against Rahimi in February 2020, barring him from coming near her or their minor child. Rahimi was subsequently convicted under 18 USC § 922(g)(8), which was passed to protect victims of domestic violence, a conviction he challenges here.

A recent study in The Journal of American Psychiatry and the Law found that guns were used in 54 percent of domestic homicides, and were associated with a 71 percent increased incidence of additional victims — that is, turning an intimate partner assault into a mass shooting. But that's not the Fifth Circuit panel's problem, as they state in the very first sentence of this opinion: "The question presented in this case is not whether prohibiting the possession of firearms by someone subject to a domestic violence restraining order is a laudable policy goal."

Indeed, the question of whether it's a "laudable policy goal" is entirely moot at this point, because the the court just ruled that it's unconstitutional. So, wife beaters across the Fifth Circuit will now get all their guns back courtesy of Judges Jones, Corey, and Ho. And they couldn't have done it without a Supreme Court packed with Trump's handpicked lunatics.

Because ever since Justice Clarence Thomas's ghastly opinion in  N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen    , gun restrictions can only be upheld if they would have made sense to colonial-era lawmakers. And — spoiler alert! — our forefathers were not about disarming men who hit their wives. Here's how these filthy sumbitches throat-cleared that one away:

When the challenged regulation addresses a “general societal problem that has persisted since the 18th century, the lack of a distinctly similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment.” Moreover, “if earlier generations addressed the societal problem, but did so through materially different means, that also could be evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional.”

Not that it would really matter if the Founding Fathers confiscated guns from domestic abusers. Justice Thomas contorted himself into a giant pretzel in Bruen to pretend that there were no gun restrictions to speak of in the halcyon era of our country's founding, conveniently ignoring mountains of evidence to the contrary. The ghouls controlling the federal judiciary don't want any gun restrictions, and they're going to invalidate all of them . Just look at Judge Wilson waving away the colonial-era prohibition on "dangerous" people carrying guns:

Despite some facial similarities in how these “dangerousness” laws worked—like § 922(g)(8), they operated to disarm covered people—there were also material differences. For one, they disarmed people by class or group, not after individualized findings of “credible threats” to identified potential victims. Even more, why they disarmed people was different. The purpose of these “dangerousness” laws was the preservation of political and social order, not the protection of an identified person from the specific threat posed by another. Therefore, laws disarming “dangerous” classes of people are not “relevantly similar” to § 922(g)(8) such that they can serve as historical analogues.

Gross! But not as gross as these degenerates pretending that it's a slippery slope from confiscating domestic abusers' guns to disarming people who drive gas-powered cars.

Perhaps most importantly, the Government’s proffered interpretation lacks any true limiting principle. Under the Government’s reading, Congress could remove “unordinary” or “irresponsible” or “nonlaw abiding” people—however expediently defined—from the scope of the Second Amendment. Could speeders be stripped of their right to keep and bear arms? Political nonconformists? People who do not recycle or drive an electric vehicle?

What even is this shit? Also rancid: reasoning that Samuel Adams proposed that the Second Amendment be limited to "peaceable citizens," and it did not pass — therefore, violent citizens are entitled to wander around with heavy weapons.

"Rahimi, while hardly a model citizen, is nonetheless part of the political community entitled to the Second Amendment’s guarantees, all other things equal," they go on, concluding that "the ban on possession of firearms is an 'outlier[] that our ancestors would never have accepted.' Id. Therefore, the statute is unconstitutional, and Rahimi’s conviction under that statute must be vacated."

The Justice Department has vowed to appeal to the entire Circuit en banc .

TL, DR? Fuck dem kids. And their mamas too. 

[  US v. Rahimi  , Fifth Circuit Opinion]

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