At Volokh Conspiracy, Josh Blackman: A Reversal in Rahimi Will Be Tougher to Write Than Critics Admit. From the introduction:
The conventional wisdom is that the Supreme Court will certainly reverse the Fifth Circuit in Rahimi. Indeed I've voiced that position myself several times, especially in light of a potential grant in Range. (The New York Times picked up Justice Barrett's question). But let me challenge that conventional wisdom: an opinion reversing Rahimi will be tougher to write than most critics will admit.
Let's start with a premise: Rahimi was a faithful application of Bruen. Efforts to "clarify" Bruen are really an attempt to rewrite the precedent. I don't think anyone seriously doubts this premise. Now the reason why the Court may "clarify" Bruen is because certain members of the Court don't like the results that it yields: namely, that a dangerous person like Rahimi can possess a firearm. Again, the correctness of the Bruen precedent should be able to stand without regard to how it may be applied in future cases. But that's where we are. Some members of the Court who profess to be originalists are still motivated by consequentialism. And these concerns came out loud and clear during oral argument.
Still, there is a long time between November and June. A majority opinion has to be written. And that opinion will have to navigate an issue that didn't get much attention during oral argument: what other constitutional rights should dangerous people lose? Certainly this case can't just be about guns.
One of my first published articles, The Constitutionality of Social Cost, was published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy in 2011. I had started thinking about the topic in 2009, before McDonald v. Chicago was decided. The basic premise of my article was that there are many dangerous rights, and the Second Amendment was not an outlier….
UPDATE: Will Baude has a contrary view: It's Not So Hard to Write an Opinion Following Bruen and Reversing in Rahimi. In conclusion:
In general, I do think there is a campaign to get the Court to walk back from the test it set forth in Bruen, as the right to keep and bear arms is generally quite unpopular among lawyers and policymakers. But not every decision upholding a regulation against facial challenges in fact reflects such a retreat from Bruen. And the Court's decision in Rahimi need not be such a retreat, so it seems premature to conclude that it would be.
Posted at 6:31 AM