Well, what do I know….
At least in the view of the New York Times SCOTUS reporter Adam Liptak, the course of the Supreme Court oral argument in United States v. Rahimi indicates that the Court is likely to over-rule the Fifth Circuit and let the law discussed her in this post stand. Just call me “Fredo”: I was certain that the Court would agree that the law is unconstitutional, and I’m still certain it should be so ruled.
Based on the story, the Justices are persuaded by the fact that Rahimi, after the law was imposed on him, proved he was in fact a danger to society and should not have access to a gun.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said there was little question that Mr. Rahimi, who has been accused of a string of shootings, posed a threat to public safety.
“You don’t have any doubt that your client is a dangerous person, do you?” the chief justice asked Mr. Rahimi’s lawyer, J. Matthew Wright.
Mr. Wright said he would “want to know what ‘dangerous person’ means.”
Chief Justice Roberts supplied a definition. “Someone who is shooting at people,” he said. “That’s a good start.”
Mr. Wright retreated. “That’s fair,” he said.
In general, Mr. Wright’s argument was unfocused, frustrating the justices.
“I’m so confused,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said.
Chief Justice Roberts, after hearing a concession, said, “Why isn’t that the end of the case?”
It sound to me like an inept attorney is representing Rahimi. The answer to Robert’s question is, “The fact that he shot at people after the unconstitutional removal of his Second Amendment rights cannot retroactively validate the law. The issue is whether he can fairly be ruled dangerous unilaterally, based on allegations that have not be challenged or proven. That he used the gun irresponsibly after the law was applied to him is what ethicist call moral luck.”
We won’t find out until June. If, as I suspect, the Court is, excuse the pun, gun-shy after the recent mass shootings and inclined to deliberately, excuse the pun, trigger more enmity against it, that’s profoundly depressing. It also would make the op-ed I excoriated correct. That would also be depressing. If the law is upheld, it will be far from the only Supreme Court decision I believe is in error. Who knows, maybe the majority opinion will convince me…
Ethics Alarms 
My God, John Cazale was SOMETHING! Born in Revere, buried in Malden. How could anyone put that much energy into a scene? I wonder whether Meryl Streep would have not become so one dimensional if he hadn’t died so young.
Maybe she always played someone acting as if she was a grieving widow because she simply was.
He was certainly superb in everything I ever saw him in. What a loss.
Isn’t there a principle in deciding an issue that you can’t have other factors prejudice a separate decision? I’m recalling a case of a prisoner found with cord and spools in his cell, and his charge of weapon possession by an inmate went to a jury. The jury wasn’t allowed to know that he was serving a conviction of strangling his victim with a garrotte.
SCOTUS striking down this one law doesn’t make the defendant a free man. There are many other charges of criminal activity that can put him away.
Additionally–the law sure did a bang-up effective job of preventing the criminal activity! Isn’t that the stated purpose? To prevent tragedy? If the law was effective, this case wouldn’t even be on the docket.
So why is it on the docket? Because it infringes constitutional rights of hundreds of thousands of others, including those wuth no inclinations of violence or criminality.
I agree with you completely.
Althouse wrote about the same Times article today–Ha! I beat her this time!—and almost all of her commenters had the same reaction I did. One writes, “SCOTUS should not be determining what is “reasonable” violation of the Constitution/”
Hate to say I told you so.
“The fact that he shot at people after the unconstitutional removal of his Second Amendment rights cannot retroactively validate the law”
He actually shot at someone before the court issued the domestic abuse protective order that took his guns.
Irrelevant, though, because that was not the basis for the order.
What wasn’t the basis for the order?
The evidence presented in court to get the protective order included him knocking the woman to the ground, dragging her to his car and pulling out a gun which he fired at a bystander.
That’s still not evidence. Firing the gun would be a crime: “She says he committed a crime” doesn’t constitute committing a crime. If he was convicted of that crime, then he would be a felon, and wouldn’t have a right to a gun. It’s also not domestic abuse, which is the basis on which the Times opinionater was arguing the Court should uphold the law. Of course people who fire guns at bystanders shouldn’t have access to guns—but they shouldn’t be found guilty of doing that based on a single witness.
It wasn’t used as evidence to determine a crime was committed, it was used as evidence in court for the domestic protective order where the court determined Rahimi was violent.
I was correcting your nonfactual statement that Rahmi’s use of a gun happened after he had his gun taken away from him.
Being convicted of a crime isnt the only way someone can have their gun rights stripped. We have examples of people being disarmed without being convicted of a crime but rather through the civil courts.