Hunter Biden and his team of defense attorneys took a massive blow this week in the wake of a bombshell U.S. Supreme Court ruling.

According to Fox News, Hunter Biden and his lawyers were counting on "the Court striking down the federal gun law at issue in the case of United States v. Rahimi," legal scholar Jonathan Turley claims.

The president's son had taken the same stance on the issue as the National Rifle Association, which surely upset the White House, and challenged the constitutionality of the charges for which he was recently convicted.

Hunter Biden was found guilty on three gun charges by a Delaware jury earlier this month.

What's going on?

Turley explained why SCOTUS ruling the other way would have been a massive boon to Hunter Biden's legal defense, at least in the appeals process.

He went on to provide background of the Rahimi case that Biden and his lawyers were counting on to go in their favor.

Fox News noted:

The case involved Zackey Rahimi, a drug dealer who was under a restraining order after a 2019 argument with his girlfriend (called C.M. in the opinion) who had a child with him. Rahimi allegedly knocked C.M. down, dragged her to a car, and then (as the C.M. fled) shot at either C.M. or a bystander. He was also accused of threatening to shoot her if she went to the cops.

The Texas trial court found that Rahimi was not only engaged in "family violence" but that additional violence was "likely to occur again in the future."  Under the protectiveorder, Rahimi's gun license was suspended for two years and he was barred from contacting C.M. for that period.  Under the order, his gun rights would be suspended for either one or two years after his release date, depending on any imprisonment.

It was noted that the man violated the order several additional times, with Turley noting that he wasn't exactly a model, law-abiding gun owner.

That was not exactly a poster child for lawful gun owners and the Court failed to see the suspension of his gun rights as an unconstitutional deprivation. Since the Court first recognized the Second Amendment as an individual right in District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), it has stated that this is not an absolute right. There are no truly absolute rights in the Constitution.

Turley continued:

While the majority found that such temporary limits were consistent with historical practices, Justice Thomas, the author of theBruendecision that reinforced the protections under the Second Amendment after Heller, objected that the Court could not cite "a single historical regulation" to justify the federal law.  Bruenhad emphasized such historical practices in interpreting the protections under the Second Amendment.

He concluded by claiming as a result of the ruling at the high court, Hunter Biden's hope of a hail mary situation was gone, and won't have much in the way of room for appealing the conviction.

Social media reacts

Many reacted to Turley's take on the matter across social media.

Hunter Biden may have lost the greatest Hail Mary pass in history in Rahimi. When Staubach threw his famous pass to win the game, he "closed [his] eyes and said a Hail Mary.” Roughly 50 years later Hunter missed his pass in equally spectacular fashion... https://t.co/1ArBeVMRbv

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) June 22, 2024

"Of course a right can be stripped by due process. Imagine if that were not true. Could prisoners that have free speech rights be allowed to have a gun behind bars????" one X user wrote.