The magnificent character of Justice Clarence Thomas often glints its brightest when he’s in a minority of one, as in his dissent today in the Second Amendment case of United States v. Rahimi. Eight of Justice Thomas’s colleagues agree to deny the right to bear arms to Americans who are subject to restraining orders for domestic violence. Yet on what grounds, the justice asks, can that right — the palladium* of our liberty — be traversed?

We carry no brief for any form of domestic violence. Nor, we are confident, does Justice Thomas. Yet his dissent underscores the fact that owning and carrying a firearm is a liberty possessed by all Americans — even those whose conduct is deplorable. This liberty, like the rights to speech, peaceable assembly, or religious free exercise, is vouchsafed to the constitutional bedrock and cannot be so easily waived by mere law.