Zackey Rahimi alleges the domestic abuse law, 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(8), violates the Second Amendment under a new test established by the court’s 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, which instructs courts to look for historical analogues of the challenged modern statutes. Meanwhile, the federal government claims the court can uphold the prohibition even if it can’t find a historical match because past federal firearm regulations have always been aimed at groups of people the government has deemed dangerous, like domestic abusers.
Rahimi’s case is the first time the court has been asked to apply its so-called Bruen test, but the justices, including Bruen’s author Justice Clarence Thomas seemed skeptical at oral arguments in October that Rahimi’s theory holds water.
In the second case, firearms instructor Michael Cargill is challenging the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ 2019 decision to categorize bump stocks as machine guns, the possession of which is banned under the National Firearms Act. Bump stock-equipped semiautomatic rifles are different from machine guns, he argues, because each shot fired by the rifle requires a separate pull of the trigger, which the bump stock facilitates by using the gun’s momentum to repeatedly bump the trigger against either the shooter’s finger or a barrier.
