# United States v. Rahimi The first time the Court pumped the brakes on its own [[Second Amendment]] revolution. Decided June 21, 2024 by an 8–1 vote, *United States v. Rahimi* upheld the federal law barring people subject to domestic-violence restraining orders from possessing firearms — and in doing so, clarified (and softened) the history-and-tradition test the Court had announced two years earlier in [[NYSRPA v. Bruen]]. ## The Holding After *Bruen*, lower courts read its demand for a founding-era "historical analogue" so strictly that a wave of gun regulations — including the domestic-violence prohibition at issue here — were struck down. Chief Justice [[John Roberts]], writing for eight Justices, held that *Bruen* does not require a historical "twin," only a relevant historical principle: founding-era "surety" and "going armed" laws showed a tradition of disarming those who pose a credible threat of physical danger. That was enough to sustain the statute. Justice [[Clarence Thomas]], author of *Bruen*, was the lone dissenter, arguing no sufficiently analogous historical law existed. ## Significance *Rahimi* is the first post-*Bruen* "correction" — the Court signaling that its history-and-tradition framework is not a suicide pact for all modern gun regulation. It tempered, without overruling, the most disruptive feature of [[NYSRPA v. Bruen]] and slowed the lower-court cascade that had thrown felon-in-possession, sensitive-places, and domestic-violence restrictions into doubt. In the vault's Second Amendment arc — [[District of Columbia v. Heller]] → [[NYSRPA v. Bruen]] → *Rahimi* — it marks the point where the Court began managing the consequences of the doctrine it built. ## See Also - [[NYSRPA v. Bruen]] — The test *Rahimi* clarified - [[District of Columbia v. Heller]] — The foundation of the individual-right line