JURIST - Hotline: <u>Hayes</u> case reaffirms Congressional intent to keep guns away from domestic abusers

Daniel R. Vice [Senior Attorney, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence]: "The Supreme Court in United States v. Hayes rejected arguments by a convicted wife beater that federal law allowed him to possess firearms, upholding the broad federal ban on gun possession by convicted misdemeanor domestic abusers. Justice Ginsburg's majority opinion stressed that "[f]irearms and domestic strife are a potentially deadly combination nationwide," citing an amicus brief filed by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Hayes was the first gun case since the Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller [PDF file] that the Second Amendment grants a right to possess handguns in the home for self-defense. Yet neither the Hayes majority nor Justice Scalia's dissent even mentioned Heller, signaling that the Court recognized that there was no Second Amendment issue and that Justice Scalia meant what he said in Heller regarding the limited nature of the right. Indeed, amicus groups had urged the Court to recognize misdemeanor abusers' right to bear arms, yet the most Justice Scalia said in his Hayes dissent was that for law-abiding persons, there is "nothing wrong with possessing a firearm."

During oral argument, Justice Scalia mocked the seriousness of the charge against Hayes, stating that "it's not that serious an offense." Yet the Court's ruling recognizes that abusers like Hayes, who as the government stressed "hit his wife all around the face until it swelled out, kicked her all around her body, kicked her in the ribs," pose a serious danger to the public if armed with a gun. If Justice Scalia's view in Hayes had prevailed, tens of thousands of convicted abusers in nearly half the states would have been allowed to rearm themselves with firearms. Thankfully, seven justices on the Court recognized "Congress' manifest purpose" in keeping firearms away from dangerous abusers."