EDITORIAL - No more guns for US domestic abusers

In what could be a show of good things to come, the US Supreme Court recently upheld a federal law prohibiting domestic abusers from possessing a firearm.

According to the Agence France-Presse it was “the first gun case to come before the court -- where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority -- since a major decision issued in 2022 loosening gun restrictions”.

"When an individual has been found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another, that individual may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the second amendment," the same reported quoted Chief Justice John Roberts as saying.

"Since the founding, the nation's firearm laws have included regulations to stop individuals who threaten physical harm to others from misusing firearms. As applied to the facts of this case, (the law) fits comfortably within this tradition."

Various spontaneous shooting incidents as well as school, office, home, and public space shootings in the US have been mentioned a lot in this editorial, especially if they victimized innocent bystanders, children, as well as the occasional Filipino. We have always pushed that the US authorities should limit gun ownership to those who truly deserve to have guns.

Dare Americans hope that this is a step in the right direction? It might just be domestic abusers banned from owning guns today. Who knows? In the future they might expand this prohibition to those who have been proven to have violent dispositions, those who have made serious threats to people or institutions, and those who announced online that they want to kill, among others.

For sure there will be resistance to further expansion of this prohibition, thanks to the strong gun culture in the US which has been a thing since their frontier days. The same report above mentions that there are actually more guns than people in the US, it also says that the Gun Violence Archive registered more than 40,000 deaths in the US last year alone.

In the end, Americans must realize that they might have to choose between letting the vast majority of people own firearms and the safety of their schools, offices, homes, and public spaces.