The Supreme Court just proved that its gun rulings have been a disaster
The Supreme Court just proved that its gun rulings have been a disaster
The justices double-down on the laws of the 18th century.
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In 2019, Texan Zackey Rahimi assaulted his girlfriend and fired his gun at a witness. He was put under a domestic violence restraining order, which he violated by possessing a firearm—an infraction under a 1994 federal laws—which he fired at people on multiple occasions. In his defense, Rahimi argued that the restraining order’s gun ban violated his 2nd Amendment right to bear arms.
The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed: there was no 18th century law analogous enough to the statute barring Rahimi from possessing a gun, and therefore under Bruen, that statute must be unconstitutional.
Yo what the FUCK
I can see why Texas is the venue that Republicans go to when they wanna get some crazy shit into precedent on a federal level
How was he not charged with a felony for any of that?
I could be wrong, but my assumption is that he's in quite a lot of trouble and going to be in an extended limbo of custody and probation for quite a while going forward because of his other charges, whichever way the more minor issue of violating the protective order comes out (i.e. his lawyers are just mounting a vigorous defense as they're supposed to do, and they found one of them that they can fight effectively through this weird little argument.)
But like, shooting at multiple people in the past is a felony unless it was judged to be self defense, right? I'm assuming it wasn't self defense from the way it mentions him firing the gun at people. And if he's under indictment for a felony charge or has been convicted of a felony he isn't allowed to have firearms regardless of any other DV situation. What happened with the "firing at people" thing, did he get off?
It's Texas. He was probably shooting at a liberal. It's de facto legal there. The Governor just pardoned a convicted murderer. This Uber driver had posted on line and in text messages that he wanted to kill racial justice protesters, then drove to a protest. He then found an armed protester (again, it's Texas so of course there was one there), and got in an argument with him. Eventually, he got tired of waiting for the protester to point a gun at him so he could claim self defense and just shot the protester to death anyway. He was convicted and sentenced to jail. Abbott however, decided that that was unfair. He said, and this is a quote, “Texas has one of the strongest ‘Stand Your Ground' laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.”
So you see, in Texas, shooting at people, even killing them, isn't apparently against the law if the people you are shooting at are liberals.
Firing "at" people could be attempted murder or all the way down to negligent discharge or something, depends on the details of the circumstance (what "at" means) and any plea deals and how vigorous the DA wants to be about it. And this could have all happened before everything wound it way through the courts and he was found guilty of attempted murder even if it was the felony route. It's hard to say just from that much how fucked he really is (well, until the next time he does something like this which sounds fairly likely to happen as his life continues on its present course).
The fact that they're going after him for having the firearm under the protection order instead of for being a felon makes it likely to me that he wasn't a felon at the time he was doing all these shooting-ats.
It certainly does seem that way, but frankly I think it's a major oversight to not indict or convict him of a felony charge, it leaves him still able to purchase and he has clearly demonstrated he is a danger to himself and/or others. Again, that's completely ignoring the DV too which is just further proof, but the court decided not I guess, still though they could have had him on some other charges it seems and IMO it was a failure of them not to.
it's a major oversight to not indict or convict him of a felony charge
I don't disagree with you in any respect. For reasons that aren't really clear to me, courts commit major oversights of charging people every single day. Except drugs! For some reason they really like fucking people because of drugs. Punching your girlfriend and firing a weapon near some people who shouldn't get hit with bullets strikes me as exactly one of those things that someone might some way-too-large minority of the time look at and go "you know what it's hard to say what happened and it might be tough to prosecute, fuck it, 8 months probation, let's go have a beer it is Friday."
Well drugs is a revenue generating scheme for them that also lets them overcharge POC with felonies to prevent them from getting guns, that's by design of course. Drugs should be legal (at least not a felony to posses and treatment rather than prison and idt the treatment should even be compulsory) and violent criminals need to be charged accordingly. It would honestly help a lot more than many other things people want to do like feature bans, who cares what features the violent guy can have on his gun, he shouldn't have any gun if he's proven himself a danger.
If someone's fundamental rights are violated in the process of enacting the law the trial conviction is considered invalid. So he's kind of has been under shrodinger's conviction for a federal crime, neither considered a vaild nor invalid convict until this box was opened.
But had he been charged with a felony for shooting at people before this incident even took place, he wouldn't have had his rights anymore already.
Basically I mean if he shot at people and got charged with a felony and got his guns taken as a result,
and then beat his GF and got a DV charge banning him from possessing the guns he was already banned from owning,
and then he sues on the grounds of the DV conviction banning him from having guns,
even if he wins, he is still barred from having guns because of the previous felony banning him from having guns, which would be separate from the DV.
Also even if he's awaiting trial on felony charges, he is still not legally allowed to possess a gun.
Unless you mean the police or prosecution violated his rights (like the right to counsel) during the original trial for shooting at people non-DV related, and so that case was dismissed, which is a possible explanation for why he got off without a felony for shooting at people. Could be, and that's another reason to add to the list for "why they shouldn't violate people's rights during trial," because if so that let this dickhead go free.
So... The law isn't static. With the previous Supreme Court ruling lending more power to the constitutional right to own and carry guns all those laws that you mentioned that originally banned him no longer have rock solid ground for existing at all.
Basically a state can pass any law it likes, it's only once it gets used against someone that it can go through the process of being tested as a valid law by punch testing it's capacity as constitutional violation. If there is a change to the precedent of the Constitution then then anything still in the appeals process can invoke the law as long as they can bring up reasonable proof that a current trial can support questions of constitutional violations.
His defense was basically capitalizing on a change in the law to bring into question every gun law on the books that was, prior to the new Supreme Court ruling was considered fairly standard... If the Supreme Court judged the state law in conflict with the new established constitutional interpretation basically the arrest isn't valid and the persecution would have to reconstruct the case from scratch and re-trial... And creating a domino effect potentially destroying all state gun restrictions. It's not surprising that they ruled how they did. They'd get so much kickback...
The 18th century analogy standard was widely misused. Probably because SCOTUS didn’t make it clear and it’s a strange standard anyway. But yeah, the fifth circuit is a wild one
I mean it’s basically a gateway to bad laws
“If there’s any dispute between how it used to be and how it is now, we want to make it so how it used to be wins”
“Wait isn’t there usually a reason they changed it?”
“I said no questions”
It's like exigent circumstances only exist when it benefits their arguments...