WSJ Law Blog:
The Supreme Court on Wednesday bolstered federal efforts to keep guns away from domestic abusers, ruling that even a misdemeanor conviction involving minimal force can trigger a ban on firearm possession.
A Tennessee man argued that his misdemeanor conviction for causing “bodily injury” to the mother of his child shouldn’t bar him from keeping guns because it wouldn’t qualify as a violent crime under other federal statutes.
The Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. Writing for the majority, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that the nature of domestic violence justified stricter efforts to prevent conflict between intimate partners from turning deadly.
“’Domestic violence’ is not merely a type of ‘violence’; it is a term of art encompassing acts that one might not characterize as ‘violent’ in a nondomestic context,” she wrote, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.
Justice Department documents say most forms of domestic violence are “relatively minor and consist of pushing, grabbing, shoving, slapping, and hitting,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. While those might not be serious offenses in other situations, things are different in the home, she continued.
“The accumulation of such acts over time can subject one intimate partner to the other’s control,” Justice Sotomayor wrote. Moreover, she observed, traditionally battery was defined as any “offensive touching,” whether or not it caused physical injury.
Justice Antonin Scalia wrote separately, agreeing with the outcome in Wednesday’s case but calling for a narrower definition of “physical force” that excluded “the slightest unwanted touching” and similarly minor offenses.
Does anyone else consider it rather creepy that the SCOTUS justices are writing things down about “unwanted touching?” You’d better mind your p’s and q’s in the future if your children go to any of the public communist schools.
One report about a spanking might bring the SWAT teams down on your home. And I’m sure that no man will feel like he is being targeted just because he is a man. That certainly won’t happen. And I’m sure false reports won’t be filed. And I’m sure the local courts will be more than amenable to vacating bad judgment on the part of the local LEOs. After all, they’ve always been on our side in the past, no?
