Supreme Court to hear case brought by ‘poster child’ for gun control, advocates say

Zackey Rahimi is an odd choice to be the face of the gun rights movement.

Prosecutors say he’s a violent drug dealer who has a history of domestic abuse and making threats, coupled with a hot-headed temper and a penchant for guns that has bred a string of shootings.

He shot at the home of one man who “started talking trash” online, shot at another man after a traffic collision, fired a gun in a neighborhood with children present, then shot at a driver in yet another road-rage incident, prosecutors said.

In 2021, after his friend’s credit card was declined at a fast-food restaurant, prosecutors say Rahimi pulled out a gun and started firing in the air.

Yet Rahimi’s lawyer will go Tuesday before the Supreme Court to argue that his Second Amendment rights were violated when prosecutors charged him with — and a federal court convicted him of — possessing a firearm in defiance of a restraining order his ex-girlfriend got after she accused him of domestic violence.

Rahimi’s lawyers, in briefs to the high court, disputed some of the horror-story allegations against him. But they also said those aren’t relevant to the issue at stake, which is whether his gun rights can be stripped because of a domestic violence restraining order, even though he had not previously been convicted of a felony.

Angela Ferrell-Zabala, executive director for Moms Demand Action, said Rahimi is the “poster child” for why the domestic violence gun prohibition exists in federal law.

“Domestic abusers do not have and never should have the constitutional right to possess a gun,” Ms. Ferrell-Zabala said. “Lives are on the line.”

The domestic violence prohibition has been on the books since 1994, when Congress said anyone subject to a court-issued protective order cannot possess a firearm. That puts it alongside other prohibited possessors, such as convicted felons, dishonorably discharged veterans, illegal immigrants, unlawful drug users, fugitives and those who have been found to be mentally infirm.

Rahimi first challenged the gun conviction in 2021 and lost.

But the next year the Supreme Court issued its ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, reaffirming the Second Amendment’s fundamental guarantee of firearms rights. The court said restrictions on guns must be consistent with how rights would have been understood at the nation’s founding when the Second Amendment was crafted.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which earlier had ruled against Rahimi, reversed itself, saying that in the wake of the Bruen ruling the law could not withstand the new historical test the high court had laid out.

The court said it would be different if Rahimi had been convicted of a criminal charge, and was not simply subject to a civil order.

The Bruen ruling has sparked a number of questions about the Second Amendment. Illegal immigrants have challenged their gun possession convictions, arguing that prohibition is unconstitutional. Drug users also have challenged the part of the law that applies to them.

Rahimi’s case marks the first such challenge to come back to the high court.

Rahimi’s domestic violence restraining order sprang from a 2019 encounter he had with his girlfriend and mother of his son. As they argued in a parking lot, he grabbed her, knocked her to the ground, dragged her to his car and shoved her inside, making her hit her head on the dashboard, prosecutors say.

Realizing someone else saw the encounter, Rahimi grabbed a gun and fired a shot. His girlfriend escaped amid the confusion and fled, though prosecutors say Rahimi called her later to threaten her to keep silent about the attack.

She went to court and won a two-year restraining order against Rahimi, which not only ordered him to stay away from his now ex-girlfriend but also meant he couldn’t possess a gun.

Months later he tried to contact the woman, then showed up at her house at night, earning himself an arrest. In November 2020 he was accused of threatening another woman with a gun, earning him a state charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

Then came the string of five shootings in two months, according to prosecutors: Two road-rage incidents, one neighborhood shooting, the attack on the home of the man he feuded with on social media and the shooting after his friend’s credit card was declined.

Police searched Rahimi’s home and found two weapons and ammunition — along with a copy of the restraining order prohibiting him from possessing them.

Rahimi faced state and federal charges. The state cases in Texas are still pending, but Rahimi was convicted in U.S. District Court of violating the restraining order by possessing a gun. He was sentenced to 73 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release.

Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, said there’s no doubt Rahimi is “a bad guy” and that could sway some of the justices.

“There is an old saying that bad facts make bad law and Rahimi is a bad guy. He is a drug dealer who used a gun in anger on several occasions and was under a domestic violence restraining order for assaulting his girlfriend. These bad facts will likely work in favor of those who want to see the federal law in question upheld. The facts make Rahimi a poster child for the gun control lobby and may make for bad Second Amendment law here,” Mr. Levey said.

But Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, said he thinks the justices who ruled in the majority in the Bruen case won’t be distracted by Rahimi’s rap sheet.

“There is not really a tradition of disarming people who merely have restraining orders against them, so if you take Bruen seriously, Rahimi should probably win,” Mr. Blackman said.

Rahimi himself seems to have given up on guns, according to his jailhouse letter to a Texas judge that was obtained by The Huffington Post. In it, he promised to “stay away from firearms & weapons.”

“I had firearms for the right reason in our place to be able to protect my family at all times especially for what we’ve went through in the past,” Rahimi wrote in an apology letter to the court. “But I’ll make sure to do whatever it takes to be able to do everything the right pathway.”