US v. Rahimi: Holding, Bruen Analysis, and Dissent

In United States v. Rahimi, decided June 21, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 that the federal government may temporarily bar someone from possessing firearms when a court has found that person poses a credible threat to another’s physical safety. The decision upheld 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), the federal ban on gun possession by people subject to qualifying domestic violence restraining orders, and reversed a Fifth Circuit decision that had struck the statute down. It is the Court’s first major Second Amendment ruling since New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen in 2022, and its main contribution is a clarification: the history-and-tradition test Bruen demands looks for consistent principles, not identical historical twins.¹

How the Case Reached the Supreme Court

In December 2019, Zackey Rahimi assaulted his girlfriend in an Arlington, Texas parking lot, fired a shot after noticing a witness, and later called to threaten her if she reported him. In February 2020, a Texas state court, after notice and a hearing, entered a two-year restraining order finding he had committed family violence likely to recur. The order suspended his handgun license, barred him from possessing firearms, and warned that possession while the order was in effect could be a federal felony.¹

Rahimi ignored the order. Between December 2020 and January 2021, he was involved in five separate shootings, ranging from firing an AR-15 into a house after a social media dispute to firing into the air at a fast-food restaurant when a friend’s credit card was declined. Police obtained a search warrant, recovered a pistol, a rifle, and ammunition from his home, and a federal grand jury indicted him under § 922(g)(8).¹

Rahimi challenged the statute on Second Amendment grounds. After Bruen was decided, the Fifth Circuit held § 922(g)(8) unconstitutional, and the government sought Supreme Court review.²

What Section 922(g)(8) Actually Prohibits

The statute the Court upheld does not attach to every restraining order. Three conditions must all be met before the federal firearms prohibition kicks in:

The restrained person received actual notice of the proceeding and had an opportunity to participate in a hearing.
The order restrains the person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner or the partner’s child.
The order either includes a judicial finding that the person poses a credible threat to the partner’s or child’s physical safety, or it explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force.

“Intimate partner” under federal law means a current or former spouse, someone who shares a child with the person, or someone who lives or has lived with the person.³⁴

A violation carries a fine, up to 15 years in federal prison, or both. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act raised the maximum from 10 to 15 years in 2022.⁵⁶ Because a conviction is itself a felony, it triggers a separate, permanent ban on firearm possession under § 922(g)(1).

The Holding and How the Court Applied Bruen

Chief Justice Roberts wrote for eight justices; Justice Thomas dissented alone. The holding is narrow by design: “An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”¹

The more consequential part of the opinion is methodological. Under Bruen, when the Second Amendment’s text covers the conduct being regulated, the government must show the regulation is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”⁷ In the two years after Bruen, lower courts split on how tight that historical fit had to be. Some, including the Fifth Circuit panel in Rahimi, treated the test as requiring a near-identical founding-era analogue.

The Court rejected that reading. A modern law does not need to be a “dead ringer” for a historical one; it must be “consistent with the principles that underpin the Nation’s regulatory tradition.” Two factors guide the comparison: why the regulation burdens the right and how it does so. A regulation targeting the same kind of problem through a similar kind of burden can pass muster even if no founding-era statute looked exactly like it.¹

The Historical Analogues the Court Relied On

The majority pointed to two categories of early American firearms regulation. Surety laws let a court require a person suspected of threatening the peace to post a financial bond of good behavior, forfeited if the person breached the peace. They imposed a real burden tied to a future risk of violence. “Going armed” laws, descended from the English Statute of Northampton, punished carrying weapons in a manner that terrified others, and authorized disarmament and imprisonment for people who used weapons to threaten the public.¹

Together, the Court held, these traditions establish a principle: when someone poses a demonstrated threat of physical violence, the government may restrict their access to weapons. Section 922(g)(8), the Court wrote, is “not identical to these founding-era regimes, but it does not need to be.”¹

Justice Thomas’s Dissent

Thomas, who wrote the Bruen majority two years earlier, said the historical analogues cited were “worlds—not degrees—apart” from the modern law. Under the surety regime, a person who posted a bond kept every firearm and could buy more; only the money was at risk. Section 922(g)(8) strips gun rights entirely, and a violation is a felony carrying up to 15 years and triggering a lifetime federal ban. Calling the two systems “relevantly similar,” he wrote, stretches the concept beyond recognition.¹

Thomas also objected to combining historical regimes. In his view, the majority took the justification from surety laws (preventing future violence) and the burden from going armed laws (actual disarmament) and fused them to defend a regulation no founding-era law resembled. He rejected the premise that the Second Amendment protects only “responsible” or “law-abiding” citizens and argued that criminal prosecution, not administrative disarmament, is the constitutional route to keeping guns from violent people.

What the Concurrences Signal

Five justices wrote separately, which is unusual and reflects real disagreement about how Bruen should operate going forward. Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kagan, expressed skepticism about the framework’s workability. Justice Jackson went further, saying she would have joined the Bruen dissent had she been on the Court, and flagged the practical difficulties lower courts have faced.¹

Justice Barrett offered the concurrence with the most forward guidance, writing that “historical regulations reveal a principle, not a mold,” and criticizing courts that had demanded near-exact historical twins. Justice Kavanaugh addressed the interplay of original meaning, historical practice, and precedent. Justice Gorsuch emphasized how narrow the holding is: the Court decided “only this,” that a person found by a court to pose a credible threat may be temporarily disarmed.

What Rahimi Means for Other Gun-Law Challenges

Rahimi reaches well beyond domestic violence restraining orders because it is the Court’s most concrete guidance on how flexibly the Bruen test should be applied.

The most immediate test is 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), which bans gun possession by any “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” The Fifth Circuit struck the provision down as applied to a marijuana user who was not impaired at the time, and the Supreme Court granted review in United States v. Hemani. Oral argument took place on March 2, 2026, with a decision expected soon.⁸

Challenges to the felon-in-possession ban under § 922(g)(1) raise a related question. Defendants convicted of nonviolent felonies have argued a permanent firearms ban has no historical analogue. In early 2026, the Supreme Court denied review in most of those cases but held several petitions for further consideration.⁹

The pattern coming out of Rahimi is that restrictions tied to an individualized judicial finding of dangerousness stand on the strongest constitutional footing. Restrictions based on status alone, without any court determination that a specific person threatens others, face tougher scrutiny.

What Rahimi Does Not Address

The decision resolves whether the government can disarm someone under a qualifying order. It does not address how that disarmament is enforced. Federal law prohibits possession but sets no surrender procedure, and there is no federal mechanism to ensure someone already owning firearms actually turns them in after a restraining order takes effect. Enforcement falls to the states, and practices differ significantly from one jurisdiction to the next.¹⁰

The federal prohibition also ends when the qualifying order does. When courts include the expiration date in their records, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System can automatically remove the disqualifying entry once the order lapses. If an order is terminated early, the restrained person may need to confirm with the issuing court that the update has been reported. That process is separate from restoration of firearms rights after a felony conviction, which involves its own petition procedure.

1
Supreme Court of the United States. United States v. Rahimi
2
Constitution Annotated. United States v. Rahimi – Does a Law Prohibiting a Person Subject to a Domestic-Violence Restraining Order From Possessing a Firearm Violate the Second Amendment?
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 921 – Definitions
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 922 – Unlawful Acts
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 924 – Penalties
6
Congress.gov. Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (PL 117-159) – Section-by-Section Summary
7
Justia Law. New York State Rifle and Pistol Association Inc v Bruen
8
Constitution Center. Supreme Court to Hear Arguments on Legality of Gun Bans for Marijuana Users
9
Congress.gov. The Second Amendment at the Supreme Court – Challenges to Federal Firearms Prohibitions
10
National Institutes of Health. State Efforts to Enforce Firearm Dispossession Through Domestic Violence Protection Orders