GUNSThe Supreme Court Will Decide if Domestic Abuse Orders Can Bar People from Having Guns. Lives Could Be at Stake.
The court’s ruling on United States v. Rahimi could clarify an earlier decision on guns. Or it could take away one of the best options to protect domestic violence victims. In states like Tennessee, the consequences could be deadly.
The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments next week in a pivotal firearms case that could have profound implications for how police and courts deal with domestic violence.
The question: Should people who are placed under domestic violence protection orders also lose access to their guns?
For many victim advocates, the answer is obvious. Women are five times more likely to be killed in a domestic violence incident when the abuser has access to a gun. Advocates argue that the gun restrictions tied to such orders are among the most powerful tools for domestic violence victims and that without them, more people will die.
For gun rights groups and their most ardent supporters, that is beside the point. They contend that people subject to protection orders haven’t been convicted of a crime and that taking their firearms away violates the Second Amendment. If the government can disarm them, they ask, who could the government disarm next?
Earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit sided with gun rights supporters, invalidating a federal law passed by Congress in 1994 that bars people under domestic violence orders from having firearms.
If the Supreme Court upholds that decision and rules that gun restrictions tied to restraining orders are unconstitutional, states would have fewer options to stop domestic abusers from possessing, and using, guns. And in conservative states, the aggressive rollback of gun control laws means that it is already easier for people to get guns to begin with.
This year, WPLN and ProPublica have been reporting on the issue at the heart of the Supreme Court case: the difficulty of separating domestic abusers from their guns. The court’s ruling could have immense ramifications in Tennessee, where weak enforcement of gun laws has allowed firearms to slip through the cracks with deadly consequences. According to our reporting, nearly 40% of the victims shot in domestic violence homicides in Nashville since 2007 were killed by people legally barred from having guns.
Over the past decade, the state has also made it easier for more people to get guns and carry them in more places. And a special legislative session in August — called in the wake of the March shooting at the Covenant School, where three children and three staff members were killed — failed to yield any gun reform.
