The Supreme Court on Monday declined to loosen restrictions that prevent individuals convicted of misdemeanor counts of domestic violence from owning a gun.
The court, in a 6-2 ruling, was unpersuaded by arguments from two Maine men who said their past convictions weren’t the type that should subject them to a federal ban on firearm possession.
(WSJ)- One of the men found himself in hot water for shooting a bald eagle. When authorities later discovered a past domestic violence conviction, they added a new charge that he possessed a firearm in violation of a federal ban on gun ownership by domestic abusers.
A second defendant with previous domestic violence offenses was charged with illegal gun possession after police officers found guns at his house while executing a search for marijuana.
The men argued that prior domestic abuse convictions shouldn’t trigger the gun ban if those prior offenses potentially involved only reckless behavior and not intentionally violent conduct.
The Supreme Court disagreed in a 12-page opinion by Justice Elena Kagan.
The case wasn’t originally considered a prominent matter on the Supreme Court’s docket, but the public’s interest skyrocketed when Justice Clarence Thomas asked several questions during the February oral argument, the first time the famously silent justice had asked questions during an argument session in a decade.