The Court Slams the Door on Domestic Abusers Owning Guns

In 2009, a logger named Stephen Voisine shot and killed an American bald eagle. Bald eagles are protected under federal law, though Voisine said he’d believed it to be a hawk, which is also illegal to kill in his home state of Maine. Bird classification notwithstanding, Voisine’s problems were just beginning. It turned out he had a history of domestic-violence charges, including violation of a restraining order, and a misdemeanor conviction related to hitting the woman he was living with. Federal law has long banned violent felons from owning or possessing firearms, and a 1996 law added to that category anyone convicted of domestic-violence misdemeanors. Voisine was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, and his guns were taken away. But Voisine, along with another defendant, named William Armstrong, who also had a history of domestic violence and possessed firearms, appealed, and their case made it to the Supreme Court, where Justice Clarence Thomas shocked Court-watchers last February by taking part in oral arguments for the first time in a decade: “One question,” he said. “This is a misdemeanor violation. It suspends a constitutional right. Can you give me another area where a misdemeanor violation suspends a constitutional right?”