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Domestic abusers should not have access to guns.
Common sense supports this obvious statement. Longstanding federal and state law supports it. History supports it. Even a decidedly pro-gun rights Supreme Court has now effectively recognized the importance of keeping guns away from abusers posing a risk to others.
By a strong 8-1 margin, conservatives and liberals reached near-unanimity last week in upholding the government’s ability to remove guns from people who are subject to a domestic violence protection order. Justice Clarence Thomas was the lone dissenter.
“Taken together, the surety and going armed laws confirm what common sense suggests: When an individual poses a clear threat of physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be disarmed,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
Again, this statement and the concept therein should be an obvious one. Given other gun rights rulings from the court in recent years, however, this conclusion was no sure thing. In an age of originalism over pragmatism and event precedent — or at least situational originalism when it suits the court’s majority — it was nonetheless welcome news to see eight of nine justices reaffirm the sensible principle that, yes, the Second Amendment has its limits.
No right is absolute, not even the right to possess a gun. People don’t have a constitutional right to pose a credible threat to those around them.
Even Roberts acknowledged the modesty of this ruling.
Roberts wrote in the opinion that “we conclude only this: An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”
While debates at the Supreme Court may necessarily wade into the theoretical at times, this is a real issue, and one of life and death, for far too many Mainers.
“In just the last two decades alone, 62 percent of all intimate partner violence homicides in Maine were committed with a firearm,” Kelly O’Connor, the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence Training Institute director, said in a 2023 update on the coalition’s website. “And countless other Mainers who were not murdered have been and continue to be terrorized by their abusive partners’ threatening use of firearms.”
“The people – almost always men – behaving in this way are dangerous,” O’Connor added. “And they are more dangerous when they can easily access and possess guns.”
It is a very good thing, for abuse victims and for the entire country, that the Supreme Court has upheld the government’s ability to restrict gun possession for people subject to a domestic violence protection order. But as O’Connor stressed a year ago, beyond having certain laws on the books, the implementation and enforcement of those laws needs to follow through in order to actually prohibit abusers and other so-called prohibited persons from accessing those firearms.
The fact remains that there are far too many gaps in the current system that allow prohibited persons from accessing guns that they aren’t legally allowed to have. Recent, deadly cases in Maine sadly reflect this reality. Joseph Eaton, who confessed to killing his parents and their two friends in Bowdoin as part of an April 2023 shooting spree, and Leein Hinkley, the man shot and killed during a recent standoff in Auburn after police say he tried to break into a woman’s home (which was on fire when police arrived, and a body was found there), were both able to access firearms despite criminal records that should have prevented them from possessing guns based on previous domestic violence convictions.
So while we welcome this modest yet important ruling from the Supreme Court, officials at the federal and state levels must continue to work to make sure that the reasonable laws on the books to keep guns out of the hands of demonstrably dangerous people are actually doing that. And hopefully, important steps forward like Maine’s expansion of background checks will continue to help fill those gaps, and keep more people safe while continuing to respect constitutional rights.