NRA, NORML Back Same Brief

The NRA and the nation's leading marijuana legalization group filed on the same side of a Supreme Court gun case — and the constitutional argument they're making is hard to dismiss.

State of play: United States v. Hemani is scheduled for oral argument March 2. The Trump administration is asking the justices to reverse a 5th Circuit ruling that found 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) — the federal law making it a felony for any drug user to possess a firearm — unconstitutional as applied to people whose only disqualifier is drug use. The NRA, the Drug Policy Alliance, NORML, Gun Owners of America, the Second Amendment Foundation, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers all filed briefs opposing the government.

Catch up quick:

• Section 922(g)(3), on the books since 1968, bars "unlawful users" of any controlled substance from owning guns — penalty up to 15 years.
• The 5th Circuit ruled in United States v. Connelly (2024) that a categorical ban on gun possession by drug users, with no individualized finding of dangerousness, doesn't survive the Bruen historical tradition test.
• Hemani involves a cannabis user in Texas, where recreational use is still illegal — so this isn't just a state-legalization question.

The historical argument: The government's case rests primarily on old vagrancy laws and civil commitment statutes for "habitual drunkards." The briefs opposing that position note two fatal problems: those weren't firearm regulations at all, and they required an individualized judicial finding before any rights were stripped. As the NACDL put it, process preceded prohibition — a specific person had to be found dangerous before losing anything.

"The nation has long faced the social problem of armed drunks — yet there is no 'distinctly similar' historical law that justifies [Section 922(g)(3)] as it applies to marijuana." — NRA amicus brief, United States v. Hemani

The government also argues that since habitual drunkards could historically be imprisoned, disarmament must be the "lesser" restriction and therefore constitutional. The NACDL response is worth reading: the severity of the historical punishment doesn't authorize a modern restriction that skips the procedural safeguards that made the original punishment tolerable. You can't strip the due process and keep the outcome.

The intrigue: Early American law did address drunk gun handling — but those statutes were narrow. They applied in public, only when someone was actively intoxicated, and only to carrying or discharging. They didn't strip gun rights from drinkers when they were sober. Section 922(g)(3) applies everywhere, at all times, even when the user is completely sober. The 5th Circuit flagged this directly: there's "no historical justification for disarming a sober citizen not presently under an impairing influence."

What gun owners should know:

• This case affects millions of Americans in the 18+ states where recreational cannabis is legal, but the legal question is federal and applies nationwide.
• A ruling against the government wouldn't legalize anything — it would require individualized dangerousness findings before gun rights can be stripped, rather than a blanket categorical ban.
• If the Court sides with the government, the statute stands as-is: any "habitual or occasional" use of any controlled substance is enough to make you a prohibited person under federal law, regardless of state law.

What to watch: Whether the Court engages with the Bruen historical test on its merits, or finds a narrower procedural off-ramp. The composition of amicus coalitions in gun cases has shifted noticeably since Bruen — this one is a signal of where Second Amendment litigation is heading when drug policy and gun rights collide.

The bottom line: The federal drug-user gun ban has almost no analog in the founding era, and the government's historical comparisons require stripping out every procedural protection that made those old laws defensible. March 2 is worth watching.