WUNRN
USA Supreme Court Ruling:
USA - SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS GUN BAN
FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CONVICTED OFFENDERS
By Richard Wolf - March 26, 2014
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a federal law intended to keep guns away from domestic violence offenders can apply even if their crime was nothing more than "offensive touching."
The decision was a victory for gun control advocates and groups that work to protect battered spouses and children, and a defeat for gun rights organizations that argued the federal law goes too far.
For the justices, it came down to the proper definition of "physical force" — one that a majority of them decided did not have to be violent or even directly applied to the victim by the abuser. Routine battery convictions, the court said, are sufficient to trigger the gun ban.
"We see no anomaly in grouping domestic abusers convicted of generic assault or battery offenses together with the others whom (the federal law) disqualifies from gun ownership," Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the majority.
The law was challenged by James Alvin Castleman of Tennessee, who pleaded guilty to injuring the mother of his child in 2001 and was indicted on gun charges seven years later. He sought to dismiss the gun charges, contending that his original crime did not involve physical force. Two lower courts threw out the gun indictment.
The problem for the justices is that many states do not differentiate between actual violence and other actions that cause injury. The federal law relies on definitions within state laws, but in 28 states and the District of Columbia, assault-and-battery statutes include provisions for mere touching.
During oral arguments in January, the justices wrestled with what would trigger the federal gun ban. Justice Antonin Scalia assumed a punch in the nose would suffice. Sotomayor asked about "pinching or biting, hair-pulling, shoving, grabbing, hitting, slapping" — actions that the Justice Department Office on Violence Against Women incorporates.
All nine justices agreed that Castleman's original conviction qualifies as a "misdemeanor crime of domestic violence," which makes him eligible for the federal gun ban.
But that's where Scalia drew the line. In a separate concurring opinion, he ridiculed the court's inclusion of "offensive touching" as a crime triggering the gun ban. Under the definitions of domestic violence used by public interest groups, he said, that could sweep up "acts of omission," "repeated accusations of infidelity" and "name-calling."
"When they (and the court) impose their all-embracing definition on the rest of us, they not only distort the law, they impoverish the language," Scalia wrote. "When everything is domestic violence, nothing is."