To read the various media reports about the U.S. Supreme Court hearing the 5th Circuit Appeals case of U.S. vs Rahimi that recently struck down the federal law that prevents domestic violence abusers with restraining orders from owning or possessing a firearm, and you are left with a view that this decision is solely about gun rights. The 5th Circuit's panel of three judges found that the ban on owning or possessing firearms by those under a restraining order for domestic violence violated the 2nd Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which gives U.S. citizens the right to own firearms. The Department of Justice requested that the Supreme Court review the lower court's decision citing the dangers of re-arming domestic violence abusers with guns.
But there is much more to this case than just gun rights. If SCOTUS chooses to uphold the 5th Circuit's decision, it will not just open the door for many violent domestic abusers to lawfully obtain and carry firearms - it will rip the door clean off its hinges and allow cops with domestic violence restraining orders to put their uniforms back on.
In recent months, Border Patrol has been complaining about their inability to maintain their numbers. Union leaders are quick to blame the Biden Administration for everything, but the truth is that agents leave the service for many different reasons. Some are simply retiring while others are ill and do not have the sick leave to continue in service. Some agents leave because they are of retirement age and find themselves under investigation - they retire to assure their pensions stay in place. Examples of this include former Chief Tony Barker and former Assistant Chief Gustavo Zamora. Many others are no longer serving because they believed the misinformation spread about Covid and died because they neither masked nor took the vaccines.
What the Border Patrol union and the agency does not want to admit is that one of the reasons many agents are forced to leave service is because they have committed acts that result in a restraining order that also forbids them from not just owning a gun, but possessing a gun and ammunition. If SCOTUS decides that this is a violation of a citizen's 2nd Amendment right to own and possess a firearm, many ex-agents would be able to demand their jobs back. Make no mistake, the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will eagerly put them back in their ranks.
Cops, in general, have a higher rate of domestic violence than the public or other professions. Add to this that the Border Patrol and CBP have a much higher rate of employees arrested than other law enforcement agencies, and you see the problem. The most recent estimates shows that CBP and Border Patrol employees are arrested five times more than other law enforcement agencies.
Since 2020, 727 CBP and Border Patrol officers and agents have been arrested. Source: CBP Employee Arrests
A closer look at CBP/Border Patrol's own statistics shows that year after year, domestic/family violence is the 2nd most common reason why officers/agents are arrested. Source: CBP Employee Arrests.
It is important to note that both CBP and Border Patrol management curtail the number of employees receiving restraining orders by informing spouses that if they do request such an order, they may find themselves without financial support if their spouse loses their job. This is why so many spouses who do finally file for restraining orders often have multiple accounts of going to their spouses supervisors before calling the cops. It takes irrefutable evidence to take a cop's badge which is what restraining orders with limits on firearms possessions do. The statistics above represent only a portion of the actual domestic violence that is occurring in CBP/Border Patrol families.
As this Project On Government Oversight report showed, domestic violence is a huge problem in the agencies. Yet, an oversight investigation by the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General into CBP/Border Patrol domestic/family violence intentionally left out information and "scrubbed some of the most disturbing details." One example omitted was about a CBP officer who admitted in court that he had punched his own wife in the face, was somehow not convicted, was then suspended for 5 days and was able to maintain his badge and gun. This is the norm in both CBP and Border Patrol.
In another case out of San Diego that I personally followed, a Border Patrol agent was charged in 2020 with failing to lock up his guns and ammunition after his live-in girlfriend allegedly committed suicide with one of his weapons. Unknown to the judge, the agent had 3 prior domestic violence charges from his ex-wife that were dismissed for unknown reasons. His attorney and the assistant district attorney allowed the agent to plea to a misdemeanor that did not require his gun rights to be suspended while dropping the ammunition charge that carried a 10-year ban on possessing a gun. This was contrary to what the victim's family requested, and the agent is still working as a Border Patrol agent.
If the Supreme Court finds that restraining orders issued by judges are in violation of 2nd Amendment rights to possess firearms, some of the most violent ex-cops who have terrorized their own families could be back in uniform.