Supreme Court Rules Feds Can’t Disarm You Just For Being A Regular Stoner

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the government’s prosecution of a Texas man under 18 U.S.C. §922(g)(3) – the provision barring “unlawful user[s] of” or those “addicted to” any controlled substance from possessing firearms – violated the Second Amendment.

The case, United States v. Hemani, stemmed from an August 2022 FBI search of the family home of Ali Danial Hemani, a dual U.S.-Pakistan citizen who was born in Texas and had a stable job as a project manager at a Dallas-area insurance company. The government suspected Hemani and his family members of activities related to terrorism. During the search, Hemani was cooperative: he surrendered a Glock 9mm pistol he kept in the house, pointed agents to marijuana on the property, and consented to an interview in which he admitted using marijuana about every other day. Agents also found cocaine in his parents’ closet; Hemani claimed ownership but stated his mother had hidden it from him and that he had not used any recently.

More than six months later, the government indicted Hemani on a single count, relying solely on his admitted marijuana use and possession of the gun in his home. The indictment did not allege terrorism, drug trafficking, cocaine possession as a basis for the charge, or that Hemani was intoxicated or dangerous at the time he possessed the firearm. He faced up to 15 years in prison and lifetime disarmament.

Hemani fought it in court – arguing the prosecution violated the Second Amendment under the framework established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022). The district court agreed and dismissed the indictment; the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The government sought certiorari, which the Court granted.

The Court’s Holding And Reasoning

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the Court (joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Thomas, Sotomayor, Kavanaugh, Barrett, and Jackson), affirmed the dismissal – and said that Hemani’s conduct was presumptively protected by the Second Amendment.

The government’s argument was a stretch – citing “habitual drunkard” laws which targeted people who “regularly use intoxicants” for public-safety reasons and operated similarly by restricting liberties. 

The Court completely shot that down; agreeing that a “habitual drunkard” generally meant someone intoxicated “to such a degree as to deprive him of his ordinary reasoning faculties” or “incapable of conducting [his] own affairs,” “mentally incompetent,” or who had “lost the power of self-control.” Early American statutes and cases required practical incapacitation. Given the era’s “culture of copious drinking” (notable Founders consumed significant amounts daily or at events without being labeled habitual drunkards), the law specifically applied to people too lost in the sauce to function – not regular users. By contrast, the government’s interpretation automatically disarms anyone who regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance for a non-prescribed purpose, without showing incapacitation or danger. The Supremes said that this was “difficult to square with the historical record.”

Doubts about the government’s claimed purpose: Even setting aside the historical mismatches, the Court questioned whether §922(g)(3) as construed even serves to disarm “categorically violent and unusually dangerous” persons. It incorporates the Controlled Substances Act’s broad health-and-welfare criteria (not limited to violence risk), and the government’s own recent actions – DOJ guidance curtailing marijuana prosecutions, moving some marijuana products from Schedule I to III, widespread state legalization, and data suggesting more adults now report daily/near-daily marijuana use than alcohol – undercut the claim that all regular users are inherently dangerous. Affording the government “broad power to designate any group as dangerous and thereby disqualify its members from having a gun” would risk swallowing the Second Amendment.

The decision is deliberately narrow. It does not:

• Address efforts to ban addicts or those presently intoxicated from possessing firearms.
• Invalidate other prophylactic laws Congress might enact for users of particular drugs shown to pose special firearm-misuse risks.
• Touch §922(g)(1)’s felony-disarmament provision.
• Decide whether the government could prevail with individualized proof that a defendant’s drug use renders him a danger to himself or others, or proof that a specific drug always renders its users dangerous.

It simply holds that the government’s broad argument – applied to a cooperative individual whose regular but non-incapacitating marijuana use was the sole basis for prosecution – is inconsistent with the Second Amendment’s historical tradition.

“Today’s Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Hemani is a significant victory for the Second Amendment and a major rebuke of the federal government’s attempt to turn peaceable Americans into prohibited persons without any evidence that they are dangerous,” Erich Pratt, Senior VP of Gun Owners of America said in a statement to ZeroHedge. “Gun Owners of America and Gun Owners Foundation filed an amicus brief urging the Court to look past the government’s handpicked plaintiff and to focus on the core Second Amendment issue – and thankfully, the Court did exactly that. This ruling sends a clear message: the Department of Justice cannot continue ignoring the text, history, and tradition of the Second Amendment in order to defend gun control laws. It is long past time for the DOJ to stop carrying water for anti-gun policies and start defending the constitutional rights of the American people.”