Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/23pdf/22-915_8o6b.pdf
Page Number: 32

4 

UNITED STATES v. RAHIMI 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

then . . . enforce its guarantees only to the extent they serve 
(in the courts’ views) those underlying values.”  Ibid.  Pro-
ceeding that way, we have warned, risks handing judges a 
license  to  turn  “the  guarantee  of  confrontation”  into  “no 
guarantee at all.”  Ibid.  As there, so too here:  Courts must 
proceed  with  care  in  making  comparisons  to  historic  fire-
arms regulations, or else they risk gaming away an individ-
ual right the people expressly preserved for themselves in
the Constitution’s text. 

Proceeding with this well in mind today, the Court rightly
holds that Mr. Rahimi’s facial challenge to §922(g)(8) can-
not  succeed.  It  cannot  because,  through  surety  laws  and 
restrictions  on  “going  armed,”  the  people  in  this  country
have understood from the start that the government may
disarm an individual temporarily after a “judicial determi-
natio[n]” that he “likely would threaten or ha[s] threatened 
another with a weapon.”  Ante, at 14.  And, at least in some 
cases, the statute before us works in the same way and does 
so for the same reasons:  It permits a court to disarm a per-
son only if, after notice and hearing, it finds that he “repre-
sents  a  credible  threat  to  the  physical  safety”  of  others. 
§§922(g)(8)(A), (g)(8)(C)(i).  A court, too, may disarm an in-
dividual only for so long as its order is in effect.  §922(g)(8).
In short, in at least some applications, the challenged law 
does  not  diminish  any  aspect  of  the  right  the  Second
Amendment  was  originally  understood  to  protect.  See 
Bruen, 597 U. S., at 24. 

I appreciate that one of our colleagues sees things differ-
ently.  Post, at 6–7 (THOMAS, J., dissenting).  But if reason-
able minds can disagree whether §922(g)(8) is analogous to
past practices originally understood to fall outside the Sec-
ond Amendment’s scope, we at least agree that is the only 
proper  question  a  court  may  ask.  Post,  at  5.  Discerning
what the original meaning of the Constitution requires in 
this or that case may sometimes be difficult.  Asking that 
question,  however,  at  least  keeps  judges  in  their  proper