The Supreme Court quietly handed gun control advocates a small victory

[Stellar]

More: Vox

In the middle of all the excitement about the Supreme Court’s big abortion decision on Monday, the court handed down another, smaller, win for liberals: It ruled that those convicted of domestic violence offenses can be barred by federal law from buying or owning a gun for life — even if the conviction only demonstrates that someone acted recklessly violent, as opposed to intentionally or knowingly violent, toward a partner or spouse.

Voisine v. United States is a fairly technical ruling in the grand scheme of things, but it’s still important because of what the court didn’t do. The court could have decided that gun laws don’t cover domestic violence crimes in which the abuser’s intent isn’t clearly violent — and that could have, depending on how some states and the feds apply their domestic violence laws, limited the scope of federal restrictions on guns for domestic abusers. But the court instead allowed federal gun restrictions to remain more broad.

(For more on the case’s legal details, read Rory Little’s great preview and analysis at SCOTUSblog.)

This touches on a very important aspec

[sheshe2]

1. Thank you so much.

It ruled that those convicted of domestic violence offenses can be barred by federal law from buying or owning a gun for life — even if the conviction only demonstrates that someone acted recklessly violent, as opposed to intentionally or knowingly violent, toward a partner or spouse.

That touches close to home. Thank you, Stellar.

[Orrex]

2. Many gun advocates are, of course, losing their shit over this

Too bad. It's a welcome common-sense decision .

Well done, Supremes!

[Igel]

4. Probably not.

The underlying law, making misdemeanor domestic violence grounds for barring gun possession, was the result of a SCOTUS case (as yesterday's SCOTUS decision indicated). Domestic violence was affirmed even then, to little outcry.

There was no challenge by anybody to the domestic violence provision itself.

This was a clarification of the language. The huge outcry is primarily attributed, not real. It's still a question, as far as I know, as to how many states this would apply to--just those with a distinction between reckless vs intentional domestic violence, so that accidental injury in the home can be construed as "domestic violence" and not something else. Somebody's almost certainly done the due diligence to determine how many states that applies to, but the numbers are likely to be squishy.

[malaise]

3. Agreed but

this deserved way more coverage than it received