Instead, what the announcer says on the screen or the website screams as a headline is taken as the truth. And in an important Second Amendment case before the U.S. Supreme Court, the headlines barely tell any of the true story.
Now the media in bold print asks such questions as “Should domestic abusers have guns?” A somewhat reputable news outlet proclaimed that the high court “could reverse protections for domestic violence survivors.” Another announced the nine justices will determine “if gun bans for domestic abusers are constitutional.”
Alarming, but that’s far from the whole story.
In late June, the high court granted review in United States v. Rahimi. This action followed February’s ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that determined the federal prohibition on owning guns while being under a domestic violence restraining order is unconstitutional.
Understand, there is little more abhorrent than domestic violence. Those convicted of such behavior forfeit their Second Amendment rights as much as others do for various felony convictions.
But there’s finer print involved that the anti-gun media ignores or sensationalizes.
Gun rights organizations did not bring Rahimi to the federal court system. It instead sprang from a case involving a Texas man, Zachary Rahimi, who was under a restraining order taken out by his child’s mother after a “family violence” incident.
Police searched Rahimi’s residence following the commission of other crimes he was accused of carrying out. Some of them involved shootings, at least five, over a six-week period that spanned Dec. 2020 and Jan. 2021.
The defendant allegedly shot at a person he cut off in traffic, shot at someone he was allegedly selling Percocet to, and fired a gun up into the air after a friend’s credit card was declined at a Whataburger restaurant.
By all reports he was not a model citizen. There is no doubt why respectable gun rights organizations did not champion his cause. There are multiple outstanding charges and cases involving Rahimi, and convictions on any of these could lead to loss of gun rights.
However, these charges are not the issue. The only question in the case before the Supreme Court is whether his right to keep and bear arms should have been negated by the restraining order.
With this specifically in mind, the Fifth Circuit determined that evidence does not exist that links the restraining order restriction to the nation’s “historical tradition” of firearms laws. This, of course, is a requirement established by last year’s landmark Bruen ruling.
And now the case rests with the high court, and some in the media are sensationalizing its ramifications for the sake of headlines. Journalistic organizations proclaim that the decision will determine whether domestic abusers may be disarmed, but that is simply not the case.
Rather, it will determine whether those who stand accused of domestic violence and are subject to a court order may have their constitutional rights stripped by one judge without a fair hearing, a lawyer or a jury trial.
The Fifth Circuit panel found the law overly broad. In its ruling, the judges noted, “Under the Government’s reading, Congress could remove “unordinary” or “irresponsible” or “non-law 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?”
Despite the media’s assertions that the decision could rearm convicted domestic abusers, the facts say otherwise. Instead, it is fundamentally about due process and the right of a defendant to their day in court.
No number of breathless headlines changes that fact.
