SCOTUS to decide if domestic abusers can own guns
Commentary from Michigan Public Health researcher and professor April Zeoli
Associate Professor of Health Management and Policy; Policy Core Director at the U-M Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention
The University of Michigan's April Zeoli, one of the nation's leading researchers on firearms and domestic violence, can discuss
the U.S. Supreme Court's impending decision on United States v. Rahimi, a ruling that
will either nullify or preserve laws that allow courts to grant restraining orders
that prevent domestic abusers from possessing a firearm.
Zeoli is director of the policy core at U-M's Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention
and an associate professor of Health Management and Policy at the School of Public
Health.
The Supreme Court decision will overturn or uphold a U.S. circuit court ruling that
sided with Zackey Rahimi, a Texas resident who claims a federal law temporarily prohibiting
him from having a gun while under a domestic violence restraining order violated his
Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Rahimi's right to have a firearm was suspended after he assaulted his then-girlfriend
and mother of his child in 2020, and shot at a witness who tried to intervene in the
assault. He was later charged with violating the order when police found him in illegal
possession of guns while investigating a string of shootings over two months, shootings
police say Rahimi committed. He is jailed in Texas.
"The research suggests that laws imposing firearm restrictions on people under domestic
violence restraining orders are associated with a reduction in intimate partner homicide.
A ruling that these laws are unconstitutional would allow domestic abusers to keep
their firearms and buy more, if they want, and put more lives at risk," said Zeoli,
whose research revolves around policy interventions to prevent firearms deaths by
intimate partners, as well as red flag laws and other firearms safety interventions
to prevent firearm injuries, homicides and suicides.
"Research also suggests that when an intimate partner homicide involves a gun, the
risk of additional victims, such as children, being killed increases. Indeed, the
majority of mass shootings involve the killing of intimate partners and family members.
There is a link between mass shootings and perpetrators of intimate partner violence
with firearms," Zeoli said. "My fear is any continued danger to survivors and their
families, and my focus is evidence-based research, policies and laws, such as restraining
orders, to protect potential victims."
- Related: April Zeoli discusses the future of domestic violence protective order firearm prohibitions on the Sufficiently Analogous podcast
- The Legislation Tightrope: Policy Solutions to Gun Violence
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