Several conservative justices, during a lively if largely one-sided argument, seemed to be searching for a narrow rationale that would not require them to retreat substantially from a new Second Amendment test the court announced last year in giving people a broad right to arm themselves in public. Under the new standard, the justices said courts must look to history to assess the constitutionality of gun control measures.
But conservative justices seemed prepared on Tuesday to accept that a judicial finding of dangerousness in the context of domestic violence proceedings was sufficient to support a federal law making it a crime for people subject to such orders to possess guns — even if there was no measure from the founding era precisely like the one at issue in the case.
“Someone who poses a risk of domestic violence is dangerous,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, adding that other limits on gun rights posed harder questions.
Hopefully they do allow this restriction. Dangerous people are dangerous. The conservative justices seemed pretty amenable to the idea of restricting firearms from domestic abusers and other dangerous people.