The Supreme Court faces a major test of the Second Amendment and its protections for gun rights on Tuesday.

including whether they extend

even for people subject to domestic violence restraining orders.

is at stake

the broader question of

whether modern gun control laws can deny firearms to potentially dangerous people, including criminals and drug addicts.

The court’s conservatives strongly support the Second Amendment, and last year Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion for a 6-3 majority that threatens many of the gun laws the country has enacted since the 1960s.

Thomas said the government should not deny an individual’s right to bear arms unless it can “affirmatively prove” that the restriction is “consistent with the historical tradition of this country.”

Few gun laws can meet this test because there were few legal restrictions on guns in early American history.

Relying on Thomas’s opinion, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans struck down the 1994 federal law that takes firearms away from people deemed to pose a “credible threat” to an intimate partner or their children.

“Undoubtedly,” the appeal judges said, the law was well-intentioned and “designed to protect vulnerable people in our society,” but that is not enough.

They ruled for Zackey Rahimi, a Texas man who grabbed an ex-girlfriend and tried to force her into his car. She escaped and sought protection from the court after he threatened to shoot her. He was later involved in five shooting incidents after a Texas judge granted him a restraining order requiring him to surrender his weapons.

When police went to arrest him, they found two guns in his home and he was charged with violating the court order.

But the 5th Circuit overturned his conviction and declared the law unconstitutional. “Although you are hardly a model citizen, [Rahimi] “is nevertheless among the people entitled to the guarantees of the 2nd Amendment,” 5th Circuit Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote.

On Tuesday, the court will hear the Biden administration’s defense of the law in the US versus Rahimi case.

The oral arguments could provide clues as to whether the court’s conservatives remain united behind Thomas’ historic and traditional approach to the Second Amendment.

In the past, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh that they believe the Second Amendment allows for “a variety of gun regulations.” And Judge Amy Coney Barrett said dangerous people can be denied guns.

In her appeal, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote, “The Second Amendment allows Congress to disarm individuals who are not law-abiding, responsible citizens.”

She noted that the court’s conservatives had repeatedly described the Constitution as protecting the “right of an ordinary law-abiding citizen” to have a weapon for self-defense. But “from the earliest days of the republic to modern times, legislatures have disarmed individuals who could not be trusted with firearms,” she said.

States enforce these restraining orders, she said, and at least 48 states allow guns to be taken from people deemed a danger to their domestic partner. However, if the Supreme Court rules that the federal law violates the Second Amendment, its decision would likely invalidate state laws as well.

Prelogar said the need for the law was clear. Firearms and domestic violence are a potentially deadly combination,” she wrote, citing a 2009 opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Studies have shown that “the presence of a firearm in a household with a domestic abuser increases the risk of homicide fivefold.” Prelogar wrote.

Advocate for Rahimi is J. Matthew Wright, a federal public defender from Amarillo, Texas. In his legal brief, he said Thomas’ opinion “makes this an easy case … The Founders never intended to give Congress the power to say who could keep the guns.”

At stake in the outcome of the case are several California gun laws.

In 1999, California was one of the first states to not only ban the purchase of a new gun, but also…

So

possession of firearms by a person under a temporary restraining order, according to the bipartisan California Legislative Womens Caucus.

In response to the

2015

2014 mass shooting on Isla Vista

which resulted in six deaths

California was “the first in the United States to allow immediate family members of a person who threatened violence to petition for the [restraining] order,” the group added in a letter from a friend of the court.

It took issue with the court’s focus on “originalism” and early American history to determine the fate of the country’s modern gun laws.

“The fact that women were unable to legislate, let alone vote, when this country was founded should not deter today’s female legislators from enacting reasonable, limited, and effective laws to combat the scourges of address domestic violence and mass shootings,” the group said.