## Facts

- Brittney Silvers visited her estranged husband, Victor Everette Silvers, and an argument escalated into violence.
- Victor grabbed Brittney’s hair and struck her twice; police arrested him for domestic assault.
- Victor was released on bail subject to a state no-contact condition, but he texted Brittney repeatedly to determine where she was.
- Brittney replied that she felt unsafe and wanted Victor to stay away.
- After returning to Kentucky, Brittney petitioned for a domestic-violence protective order, alleging prior assaults and that Victor had threatened her with a gun.
- Victor received notice of the protective-order hearing but did not attend.
- The state judge found that an act or threat of domestic violence had occurred and might occur again, and also found Victor was “armed and dangerous” because the conduct involved a weapon.
- The judge entered a domestic-violence order (DVO) restraining Victor from abusing, threatening, stalking, or having unauthorized contact with Brittney and barring him from possessing firearms for the duration of the order.
- Five days after the DVO issued, Victor entered the military base where Brittney lived and shot her three times, killing her, and wounded her friend.
- The federal government charged Victor with murder, attempted murder, and possessing/carrying a firearm while subject to a qualifying protective order, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8).
- A jury found Victor guilty of the § 922(g)(8) charge. After *New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen*, Victor sought to invalidate the statute (and his conviction) on Second Amendment grounds.

## Issues

1. Whether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8), which prohibits firearm possession by persons subject to certain domestic-violence protective orders, violates the Second Amendment as applied to Silvers, whose DVO was issued after notice and an opportunity to be heard and included findings related to domestic-violence risk and firearm danger.

## Decision

- The court denied Silvers’s motion seeking to set aside his § 922(g)(8) conviction (and rejected his constitutional challenge to the statute as applied).
- Applying *Bruen*, the court treated firearm possession as conduct covered by the Second Amendment’s text, then required the government to justify § 922(g)(8) by showing a comparable American tradition of firearm regulation.
- The court held that § 922(g)(8), as used here, fits within a historical tradition of temporarily disarming individuals found through judicial process to pose a danger to others.
- The court relied on the statute’s limits: it applies only while a qualifying order is in place and only when issued with notice and an opportunity to be heard and containing specified restraints and findings.
- Because Silvers was subject to a DVO entered after notice, with judicial findings tied to violence risk and weapon involvement, the court concluded § 922(g)(8) could constitutionally bar his firearm possession during the order’s term.

## Legal Principles

- Under *Bruen*, when the Second Amendment’s text covers the defendant’s conduct, the government must show the challenged firearm restriction matches the Nation’s history and tradition of firearm regulation.
- Second Amendment protections center on “law-abiding, responsible” citizens; a person judicially found to present a credible domestic-violence danger may fall outside that core category for the duration and scope of the court order.
- Historical analogues need not be exact matches; they must be similar in why they restrict arms (public safety) and how they do so (targeted, often time-limited restrictions tied to individualized risk).
- Historical practice includes measures aimed at preventing violence and breaches of the peace, including surety-style mechanisms and regulations addressing threatening armed conduct, which support disarming individuals identified as dangerous through judicial proceedings.
- Section 922(g)(8) is strongest as applied when the protective order is issued with notice and an opportunity to be heard, rests on individualized judicial determinations, and imposes a temporary prohibition limited to the order’s duration.

## Conclusion

In *United States v. Silvers*, the Western District of Kentucky upheld 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) as applied to a defendant convicted of possessing a firearm while subject to a domestic-violence order entered after notice and an opportunity to be heard and supported by judicial findings tied to domestic-violence risk and weapon involvement. Using *Bruen*’s historical-tradition test, the court ruled that the statute’s targeted, time-limited disarmament of persons found dangerous through judicial process is permissible under the Second Amendment, and it left Silvers’s § 922(g)(8) conviction in place.


United States v. Silvers, 671 F. Supp. 3d 755, 2023 WL 3232605 (2023)