Supreme Court justices have other firearms cases in their sights
The latest ruling is likely the first of many in which gun rights advocates challenge restrictions. One of those cases could affect Hunter Biden's recent conviction.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court's ruling on Friday upholding a law that bars domestic abusers from possessing firearms — a rare victory for gun control advocates — doesn't mean it is going to stop striking down other gun restrictions.
The court has several pending cases that it could act on in the next week that would give further signs of how eager the conservative majority is to continue with a long-term campaign to re-shape the scope of the right to bear arms.
How the court approaches those cases will determine whether Friday's ruling was an outlier or a sign that it is pulling back from an expansive understanding of the Constitution's Second Amendment.
The increased activity on the gun rights docket stems from the court's relatively new embrace of an individual right to bear arms as first articulated in a 2008 ruling but expanded significantly in 2022.
In the latter ruling — a case called New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen — the court said gun restrictions had to be analyzed based on a historical understanding of the right to bear arms. That led to a wave of new challenges to well-established gun restrictions including the domestic violence prohibition at issue in Friday's ruling in United States v. Rahimi.
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