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The Context Of Violence: The Lautenberg Amendment & Interpretive Issues In The Gun Control Act, Rachel B. Polan

Brooklyn Law Review

Few areas of the law are as hotly debated as gun control, or as universally condemned as domestic violence – and the Supreme Court’s decisions on the Lautenberg Amendment address both. An amendment to the Gun Control Act, it prohibits persons convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from owning a firearm. The amendment qualifies a predicate conviction as one that has a “force clause” as an element. In particular, while looking at the force in domestic violence, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that one must also look to context: a “squeeze of an arm” of an intimate partner …