
(PartiallyPolitics.com) – SCOTUS’ Friday ruling doesn’t signal the end to its striking down other gun restrictions.
On Friday, the Supreme Court upheld a law barring domestic abusers from possessing firearms, which advocates of gun control heralded as a victory.
Yet, Friday’s ruling doesn’t mean that the conservative majority has given up on its ongoing campaign to refine the interpretation of the Second Amendment.
Instead, the court’s decisions on the many pending cases it will likely rule on in the coming week will further clarify the court’s stance.
The way SCOTUS decides these cases will reveal whether Friday’s ruling was an exception or the reshaping of the court’s interpretation of the right to bear arms.
The recent gun rights cases on the court’s docket are rooted in the 2022 expansion of a rule first articulated in 2008 about the court’s position on an individual’s right to bear arms.
In the 2022 ruling, the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen, the court noted that gun restrictions should be analyzed according to the historical interpretation of the Second Amendment.
The opinion encouraged a surge of challenges to established gun restrictions.
Friday’s ruling on the domestic violence prohibition in the United States v. Rahimi case showed the court’s commitment to “history and tradition” when revisiting gun restrictions.
That ruling was a not-so-subtle step back from its hardline approach in the Bruen decision.
It also displays that the majority is deviating from Justice Clarence Thomas’ interpretation.
Thomas suggested he would have ruled the law on domestic violence unconstitutional.
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