The Constitution as a Homicide Pact

The Constitution as a Homicide Pact
12/5/2023 by Mary Anne Franks
U.S. v. Rahimi begs the Supreme Court to choose women’s lives over guns. Even if Rahimi loses, women won’t win.



Ruth Glenn, president of Survivor Justice Action, addresses at a rally in front of the Supreme Court to call on the justices to disarm domestic violence perpetrators and protect survivors, as oral arguments are heard in the case of United States v. Rahimi on Nov. 7, 2023. (Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“The Feminists should be careful in their meddling with nature. There are 300 million firearms in this country, and most of them are owned by guys,” wrote self-proclaimed “anti-feminist lawyer” Roy Den Hollander in an online manifesto. Like Zackey Rahimi—the domestic abuser at the center of the highly consequential Second Amendment case currently pending before the Supreme Court—Den Hollander threatened his intimate partner with a gun and was subjected to a protective order as a result. Also like Rahimi, Den Hollander subsequently committed additional acts of gun violence against other individuals.

On July 19, 2020, Den Hollander showed up with a gun at the New Jersey home of Esther Salas, a federal judge who had presided over one of his numerous lawsuits and with whom he had become obsessed. Den Hollander shot and killed Salas’ son and critically wounded her husband before committing suicide. In the writings he left behind, Den Hollander portrayed women as sexually promiscuous, power-hungry demons who “murder incipient beings” through abortion; thankfully, he wrote, “men still have a monopoly on firearms in this society.”

Every 14 hours in the U.S., a man uses a gun to kill his intimate partner.

U.S. v. Rahimi is a “humiliating” case for the conservative Supreme Court majority because it demonstrates the same disturbing insight as Den Hollander’s manifesto: that men use guns to coerce, control and kill women.

The facts of Rahimi reveal the gendered and destructive reality of gun use behind the illusion of abstract, idealized self-defense.

Every 14 hours in the U.S., a man uses a gun to kill his intimate partner.
Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable: Homicide, principally committed by men with firearms, is the leading cause of death of pregnant women.
Women are five times more likely to die in homes where guns are present.
Men are twice as likely to own guns than women and are far more likely to use guns against women in a household than the reverse.
Armed domestic abusers also bring death and destruction to the wider public: More than half of all mass shootings between 2014 and 2019 were connected to domestic abuse, and nearly two-thirds of mass shooters have a history of intimate partner violence.

Rahimi is the opposite of the noble protector of hearth and home invoked in the Court’s previous Second Amendment cases; he and his gun themselves constitute the threat to life. This is why it is possible, some commentators have speculated, that the Court may rule against Rahimi, despite the conservative majority’s staunchly expansionist Second Amendment commitments. During oral arguments, some conservative justices seemed receptive to solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar’s skillful argument: Prelogar said that while there is no “historical twin” of the federal restriction at issue in this case, history and tradition support the temporary disarmament of individuals who are “not responsible”—that is, those whose possession of firearms present unusual danger of harm to others or to themselves. Domestic abusers who have engaged in multiple unlawful acts, Prelogar argued, surely qualify.
. . .



The sobering reality is that even if Rahimi loses, women won’t win. The Supreme Court’s consignment of women to second-class status will not be undone by the outcome of any one case. So long as the Constitution is interpreted to value the rights of mythical gun owners and hypothetical persons over the rights of actually existing women, it will function as little more than a homicide pact.

The Supreme Court can be expected to release its decision on U.S. v. Rahimi in June or July of 2024.

https://msmagazine.com/2023/12/05/rahimi-constitution-womens-rights-gun-domestic-violence/