SCOTUS Questions Federal Gun-Weed Ban

The Supreme Court spent Monday's oral argument in United States v. Hemani picking apart the federal law that strips gun rights from anyone who uses an illegal drug — and most of the bench wasn't buying the government's argument.

State of play: The case centers on 18 USC 922(g)(3), the federal statute making it a felony for an "unlawful user" of any controlled substance to possess a firearm. Texas resident Ali Hemani was charged after FBI agents found a Glock 19, roughly two ounces of marijuana, and less than a gram of cocaine in his home. He admitted smoking marijuana a few times a week. The 5th Circuit threw the charge out.

The legal question: Under Bruen (2022), the government must show any gun restriction is rooted in America's historical tradition of firearm regulation. The government's argument: cannabis users today are analogous to "habitual drunkards" who could be disarmed at the Founding. Most justices found that analogy shaky at best.

"The American Temperance Society said eight shots of whiskey a day only made you an occasional drunkard. To be a habitual drunkard you had to do double that." — Justice Neil Gorsuch, oral argument

Gorsuch went further, noting that John Adams drank hard cider with breakfast, James Madison reportedly downed a pint of whiskey daily, and Jefferson had three or four glasses of wine each night. Under the government's theory, he asked, were those Founders all "habitual drunkards who would be properly disarmed"?

The intrigue: Justice Amy Coney Barrett exposed how broadly the statute actually sweeps. She ran through Schedule II through V drugs — Adderall, Ritalin, Xanax, testosterone, Tylenol with codeine, even Robitussin AC — and asked what any of them have to do with violence risk. Her sharpest example: someone who takes their spouse's Ambien prescription without their own script loses their Second Amendment rights under this law. "It's not the drug itself in this circumstance that's causing the dangerousness," she said. "It's the lawfulness."

Justice Sotomayor reinforced the historical point that "habitual drunkards" weren't simply people who drank regularly. They were people whose consumption had functionally incapacitated them — couldn't hold a job, couldn't care for a family, sleeping in the streets. Regular, moderate use didn't qualify. A guy who smokes marijuana every other day and keeps a Glock at home doesn't fit that mold.

Yes, but: Justices Alito and Roberts showed sympathy for the government's position, with Roberts flagging the practical problem of striking the statute down wholesale. And the government's attorney argued that scheduling decisions by the DEA do sometimes reflect public safety judgments — even if that connection isn't written into the statute's text.

What gun owners should know: If the Court rules for Hemani, 922(g)(3) either gets struck down or severely narrowed. That's a significant outcome for the roughly 50 million Americans living in states where marijuana is legal under state law but illegal under federal law — a conflict the Court's questioning made clear several justices find increasingly difficult to ignore.

What to watch: The Court's decision is expected before the term ends in late June. A ruling could also complicate the government's position on marijuana rescheduling — the Trump administration has moved to shift cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III, a fact that quietly undermines its own argument that Congress deemed any level of use categorically dangerous.