Drug Dealing Conviction Survives Second Amendment Challenge

A federal appeals court upheld the lifetime gun ban for a Wisconsin drug dealer, finding his disarmament consistent with the nation's founding-era legal traditions.

State of play: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled Thursday in United States v. Edlando Watson, affirming that the federal felon-in-possession statute is constitutional as applied to individuals convicted of dangerous crimes — specifically drug trafficking.

Catch up quick:

• May 2022: Madison, WI — a woman jumps into an Uber shouting that a gunman is pursuing her; three shots are fired at the vehicle
• Investigators trace the suspect to Edlando Watson, already a convicted felon
• Police find handguns and rifles in storage units; DNA on the weapons matches Watson
• Watson's attorneys move to dismiss, arguing the felon-in-possession law violates his Second Amendment rights under recent Supreme Court precedent

The legal question: Watson's team leaned on Bruen's historical-tradition test — the same framework gun rights groups have used successfully in other cases. Chief Judge Michael Brian Brennan wasn't buying it.

"His disarmament is consistent with the history and tradition of Founding-era laws." — Chief Judge Michael Brian Brennan, Seventh Circuit

The court's logic rested on two planks. First, founding-era legislatures regularly disarmed groups they considered threats to public safety. Second — and this is the part worth noting — many felonies in the 1700s carried a death sentence. If the government could hang someone, it can take their guns. The lesser power is implied by the greater.

Between the lines: This ruling does not settle the bigger question gun owners and civil liberties advocates have been watching: whether someone convicted of a non-violent, non-dangerous felony — a white-collar offense, a low-level regulatory violation — can be permanently stripped of Second Amendment rights. The court explicitly declined to decide that. This ruling is narrowly aimed at violent and drug-trafficking offenders.

What Idaho owners should know:

• The Seventh Circuit covers Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana — not Idaho — but federal circuit decisions influence arguments made in the Ninth Circuit and signal where courts are drawing lines
• The Bruen historical-tradition test is still the controlling standard; this court applied it against Watson, not against gun rights broadly
• The non-violent felon question remains genuinely unsettled and is being actively litigated in multiple circuits

The bottom line: A drug dealer who shot at a car loses his Second Amendment challenge. That result was predictable. The ruling worth watching is the one that wasn't written — what happens when a non-violent felon makes the same argument.