Will the Supreme Court take away decades-old domestic abuse protection?

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas set a new standard for gun laws with 2022’s New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen: If a gun restriction didn’t exist when the United States was a new nation and the Constitution was being written, it can’t exist now. Thomas’ new standard was that a law is only allowable if it is “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether to take the next logical step and strike down laws prohibiting people who have domestic violence restraining orders against them from having guns. That’s been a federal law for decades, but by the Thomas standard, it’s not “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

After all, wife-beating was fully legal at the time the Constitution was written, so no one would have considered taking guns away from a man who acted within his legal rights by beating his wife up.