US v Williamson: #5thCir affirms conviction for possession of firearm by felon: as-applied #2ndAmendment challenge fails under #Reyes; #CommerceClause challenge foreclosed; concurrence calls for clarity #appellatesky #lawsky #criminallaw #Bruen baffc.net/4lOhhKV

The Supreme Court appears likely to let stoners own guns Gun lovers may soon have the right to bear bongs.

I’m no fan of the 2nd Amendment but if ethanol consumption doesn’t disqualify Americans from legally possessing guns, I don’t see why #cannabis consumption should be a legal barrier.

#guncontrol #2a #scotus #bruen

www.vox.com/policy/48125...

US v Hembree: #5thCir reverses felon-in-possession conviction, finds #2ndAmendment violation as applied to defendant w/single predicate felony offense of simple possession of meth #concur #guns #Bruen #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/3Me1Oqh

The Supreme Court Just Got Caught in Its Gun Rights Contradictions The Supreme Court is running into a problem: There appears to be a gap between what the court writes in its opinions, and what the justices in the majority actually mean. Over the last year, the conservative justices have chastised lower court judges for not following their unsigned orders in unrelated cases. Those orders often don’t have a majority opinion upon which other judges can rely, and they typically aren’t seen as a final view on the merits. In a case in August, however, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh gratuitously accused a lower court judge of “defy[ing]” the Supreme Court’s rulings—a cardinal sin in the federal judiciary—because the judge blocked the Trump administration from freezing certain grants by the National Institutes of Health. “Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch wrote. He pointed to an unrelated stay the court had issued in a Department of Education case, which involved different federal grants, different laws, and a completely different agency. I noted afterwards that the justices were essentially asking the lower courts to read their minds and guess the right outcome instead of applying existing law and precedent. This problem was originally confined to the court’s shadow-docket cases, where things have proven to be a little more freewheeling. At oral arguments in _Wolford v. Lopez_ on Tuesday, however, the telepathy gap now appears to be affecting the court’s merits cases—the ones that receive full briefing, oral argument, and a written opinion—as well. _Wolford_ is a follow-up case to _New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen_ , the court’s landmark Second Amendment ruling in 2022. In _Bruen_ , the conservative majority struck down New York’s restrictive law for obtaining a concealed-carry permit and announced a new judicial test for evaluating whether a gun restriction violated the Second Amendment. (More on that test later.) After the ruling in _Bruen_ , multiple states revised their existing concealed-carry laws to comply with what they thought was the new legal framework. Among them was Hawaii, which did not allow concealed carry at all prior to _Bruen_. In addition to other changes, the Hawaii legislature passed a law that forbids gun owners from bringing firearms on private property that is accessible to the public without the owner’s permission. This “default-property” rule flips the burden from the property owner to the gun owner when deciding whether it is lawful to carry a legally owned firearm in public. A group of Hawaii gun owners challenged the law, arguing that it violated their Second Amendment rights by requiring them to obtain permission from every privately owned business they visit—gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores, and so on. Hawaii, on the other hand, said that the law was constitutionally sound because states had long regulated the carriage of firearms on private property. (For simplicity’s sake, I’ll stop noting the “generally accessible by the public” part from here on out.) The state cited antipoaching laws in the founding era and some later statutes, including a 1865 law in Louisiana that forbid people from carrying guns on “premises or plantations” that critics have claimed was part of the discriminatory “Black Codes” of the Reconstruction era. Prior to _Bruen_ , lower courts had weighed whether a gun restriction violated the Second Amendment with various balancing tests. On one end were state and federal interests in public safety. On the other was an individual right to bear arms for “ordinary, law-abiding citizens,” as one of the court’s prior decisions phrased it. That approach had led lower courts to uphold many existing gun restrictions, as prior Supreme Court decisions had suggested they should. With _Bruen_ , however, the court’s conservative majority explicitly forbade lower courts from engaging in such balancing tests. Instead, the court outlined a novel history-and-tradition test for judges to use when hearing constitutional challenges to gun restrictions. “When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court. “The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s unqualified command.” This originalist approach, as I’ve noted before, led to chaos in the lower courts as judges struggled to figure out which historical laws were analogous to existing ones. The Supreme Court partially backtracked in the 2024 case _United States v. Rahimi_ to conclude that only a common principle was needed, not a near-identical analogue. Hawaii argued that it had met that burden, a point on which the court’s liberal justices seemed to agree. “There was a history of, in at least New York in 1763, just before the founding, that prohibited trespassing and hunting on other people’s lands because trampling on the land was destroying it,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Alan Beck, the lawyer arguing for the gun owners. “So you don’t need under _Rahimi_ an exact duplicate historically. You just need an analogous principle.” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also noted that the Hawaii law brought reasonable clarity to a status quo that _Bruen_ had disrupted. “Once _Bruen_ said you can carry the gun outside of your home, and there was an alternative, well-established principle that private property owners can exclude people,” she explained to Neal Katyal, the lawyer representing the state of Hawaii in the case, “I think the states were trying to make sure that property owners had the opportunity to do that.” That did not stop the plaintiffs from claiming that Hawaii had some sort of animus against them. “There’s a clear body of evidence here that this was done to undermine _Bruen_ and to undermine the Second Amendment right,” Beck claimed, “and, thus, this law very clearly implicates the Second Amendment.” The reality of Hawaii’s law is that it would significantly impact the practical ability to carry a firearm in the state if one needs affirmative permission whenever entering private property. Under _Bruen_ , however, the level of a law’s impact isn’t supposed to matter. The conservatives dispensed with balancing tests in that decision because too many gun restrictions were being upheld under those tests, leading Thomas, Alito, and others to make a familiar complaint: “Mr. Katyal, you’re just relegating the Second Amendment to second-class status,” Justice Samuel Alito bluntly told Katyal. “I don’t see how you can get away from that.” The conservative justices noted that similar measures, if applied in the First Amendment context, might be unconstitutional. Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted, for example, that the First Amendment allows candidates to go door to door to solicit votes. “But you say that it’s different when it comes to the Second Amendment […] when the candidate wants to walk up and he’s carrying a gun,” she noted. “What exactly is the basis for the distinction?” It is odd to imagine a candidate canvassing for votes with a gun at his side, but that may be beside the point. Katyal argued that it didn’t matter because the court had charted a radically different course with gun rights. “With the First Amendment, you’ve got burden tests and all sorts of stuff that this Court disclaimed in _Bruen_ at page 22,” he told Justice Amy Coney Barrett. “And so it’s just going to apply somewhat differently.” Barrett and Roberts, who appeared to be in favor of striking down the Hawaii law, pressed Katyal further on other First Amendment examples, such as soliciting. Barrett even proposed an eyebrow-raising hypothetical on which a private property owner—again, like a store or restaurant—could reject someone on the basis of race under Katyal’s reasoning. “I mean, absent a public accommodations law or in a private residence, you could turn someone away on the basis of race,” she noted. Katyal disagreed with her premise under the _Bruen_ framework. “There is no antidiscrimination component in the Second Amendment the way there is with the Equal Protection Clause,” he countered. That prompted Alito’s aforementioned interjection that Katyal was reducing the Second Amendment to a “second-class right.” He respectfully disagreed, noting that the _Bruen_ test was a much blunter instrument than the tests the court had developed in other areas of constitutional law. “It’s not a second-class right,” Katyal replied. “It just doesn’t have the same components of viewpoint discrimination or anti-discrimination for the Fourteenth Amendment, and it’s just not in the Second Amendment.” What the case ultimately comes down to, in other words, is what the court really meant in _Bruen_. The justices could have adopted a more multi-faceted test, but they eschewed it in favor of a simpler, bright-line originalist test. If the conservative justices truly meant that Second Amendment restrictions are presumptively invalid unless they had a historical analogue, which Hawaii has readily provided here, then the case should not be as difficult as the justices made it sound on Tuesday. If, on the other hand, the goal of _Bruen_ was to demolish all concealed-carry restrictions in blue states, to force them to accept the presence of guns in nearly every aspect of everyday life, to treat gun owners as akin to a constitutionally protected class, and to elevate the right to carry over basic private property rights, then the court’s decision in _Wolford_ will be as easy as the conservative justices made it sound on Tuesday. Lower courts will once again be left in the unenviable position of trying to guess what the Supreme Court really meant instead of relying on their written rulings for guidance. A decision is expected by the end of June at the latest.

Original post on stranger.social

Armed Americans vs. ICE is a Recipe for Disaster. People WILL Start SHOOTING BACK #JonathanRoss #ReneeGood #DerekChauvin #DonaldTrump #JDVance #PamBondi #CashPatel #BrettKavanaugh #ICE #immigration #deportation #SecondAmendment #FourthAmendment #14thAmendment #castledoctrine #Heller #Bruen […]

US v Cockerham: #5thCir reverses: conviction for #firearm possession under 922(g)(1) violated #2ndAmendment where defendant's sole predicate offense was failure to pay child support #concur #dissent #Bruen #Rahimi #criminallaw #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/4pNOXd5

US v Peterson: #5thCir affirms denial of suppression/dismissal re unregistered suppressor: #NFA licensing scheme presumptively constitutional per #Bruen; #2ndAmendment as-applied challenge failed; #goodfaith exception applied #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/4aKFAG8

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The Gun Rights of Drug Users Are Up for Grabs at the Supreme Court The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it would review a Second Amendment case that challenged a federal law forbidding drug use by gun owners, revisiting the history-and-tradition test in one of the most widely invoked gun restrictions in the country. The case, _United States v. Hemani_ , is the second major Second Amendment case that the justices have taken up this term. Earlier this month the court also agreed to review a Hawaii law on the default rules for when gun owners can carry them on other people’s private property. Monday’s announcement could have even broader implications. The Justice Department told the justices in their brief that the provision in question is one of the most widely prosecuted laws in the nation, and that past drug use is also one of the most common issues that come up in federal background-check denials. Laws in two-thirds of the states could also be affected if the court rules in the defendant’s favor. The case’s namesake, Ali Daniel Hemani, was charged with violating a provision in federal gun law known as Section 922(g)(3). The provision makes it a felony offense for anyone “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” to own or carry a firearm. Tens of thousands of people have been prosecuted under this section—including former President Joe Biden’s surviving son Hunter. The plaintiff in this case is not a typical American drug user. Federal prosecutors allege that Hemani, a dual U.S. and Pakistani citizen, was already on the FBI’s radar for years for suspected ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, a powerful military organization within the Iranian government that often operates overseas. The State Department lists the IRGC as a designated terrorist group for its alleged role in attacks on U.S. and foreign civilians. Federal agents searched Hemani’s phone during a border crossing in 2019 and found evidence that he had traveled to Iran and liased with people who were allegedly tied to Iranian government groups. They also found evidence that Hemani used and distributed drugs. After searching his family’s house, they found marijuana, cocaine, and a handgun, which Hemani claimed belonged to him and not his relatives. He was then charged under Section 922(g)(3) for his marijuana use. The Supreme Court’s Second Amendment rulings soon threw those proceedings into turmoil. In the 2022 case _New York State Pistol and Rifle Association v. Bruen_ , the court’s conservative majority laid out a new test for lower courts to use when weighing gun restrictions. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, said that courts should only use a history-and-tradition test to determine whether the laws should be upheld. “When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct,” Thomas wrote for a 6-3 court. “The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s unqualified command.” As I wrote about in _Bruen_ ’s aftermath, this test quickly ran into trouble in the lower courts. Different courts and judges struggled to figure out what constituted a “historical analogue,” leading to wildly diverging results among the lower courts. Some courts also used it to strike down some of the most widely agreed upon gun restrictions by interpreting the historical evidence as narrowly as possible. The Supreme Court itself backpedaled on _Bruen_ two years later in _United States v. Rahimi_. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had used the history-and-tradition test to weigh the constitutionality of a federal law that confiscated guns from alleged domestic abusers. Since the concept of domestic violence did not really exist in the early republic, there were no laws against it or “historical analogues” to rely upon. As a result, the _Rahimi_ panel held that the law was invalid. The Supreme Court soon granted review and overturned that decision. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a 8-1 court, watered down the _Bruen_ test by allowing courts to think more broadly when considering whether colonial-era laws are comparable to modern ones. Thomas, the lone dissenter, said he would have upheld _Bruen_ ’s standard as written—no surprise, since he created it—and struck down the law in question. The other eight justices sent a clear signal that courts need not be so hidebound. “When a challenged regulation does not precisely match its historical precursors, ‘it still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster,’” Roberts wrote, quoting from precedent. “The law must comport with the principles underlying the Second Amendment, but it need not be a ‘dead ringer’ or a ‘historical twin.’” In an unrelated case while Hemani’s prosecution was ongoing, the Fifth Circuit held that 922(g)(3) violated the Second Amendment under _Bruen_. The Supreme Court vacated that ruling and instructed the Fifth Circuit to reconsider that decision after _Rahimi_ was decided last year. Two months later, in _United States v. Connelly_ , the Fifth Circuit largely stood by its original holding that 922(g)(3) was unconstitutional. Drug use, such as we know it today, did not exactly exist in the early republic. The Fifth Circuit panel rejected various “analogues” to 922(g)(3) that were proposed by federal prosecutors: laws that disarmed people with mental illnesses, laws that disarmed people considered to be “dangerous” by the community, and laws that restricted firearm use while intoxicated. The panel noted in Connelly’s case that while intoxication laws were a tempting comparison, they could also be easily distinguished from drugs. “These laws may address a comparable problem—preventing intoxicated individuals from carrying weapons—but they do not impose a comparable burden on the right holder,” Judge Kurt Engelhardt wrote for the panel. “In other words, they pass the ‘why’ but not the ‘how’ test. Taken together, the statues provide support for banning the _carry_ of firearms _while actively intoxicated_. Section 922(g)(3) goes much further: it bans _all_ possession, and it does so for an undefined set of ‘user[s],’ even while they are not intoxicated.” (Emphasis his.) Earlier this year, the Fifth Circuit sided with Hemani on his Second Amendment challenge by reiterating its ruling in _Connelly_. The Justice Department then urged the Supreme Court to intervene in a petition for review in June. Solicitor General John Sauer emphasized that the Trump administration supported the Second Amendment, but also argued that it fit within the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulations. Most of the government’s emphasis centered on the alcohol analogy. “If anything, Section 922(g)(3) rests on an even stronger justification than laws about drunkards,” the Justice Department told the court. “Habitual users of drugs, which are unlawful, pose a greater danger than habitual users of alcohol, which was legal at the founding and remained legal for most of American history.” Hemani, for his part, took issue with the government’s decision to bring up his alleged Iranian ties in the case and urged the justices to focus only on the exact charges before them. It also disputed the government’s history-and-tradition analysis, arguing that it had relied too heavily on laws unrelated to gun ownership to make its case. “The government’s] argument that history and tradition support regulation under Section 922(g)(3) is tenuous at best,” Hemani [explained in his brief. “[Its] logic is as follows: 18th century laws against vagrancy includes restriction on rights of ‘drunkards;’ 19th century laws allowed for drunkards to be committed to asylums or placed under guardianship; and surety laws sometimes extended to ‘common drunkards.’” Hemani also pointed to the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that addressed the government’s claims. “Considering the ‘extremely high level of alcohol consumption in the early Republic, this handful of generally inapposite laws does little to help the government’s position,” the panel had noted. “The government fails to identify any relevant Founding-era tradition or regulation disarming ordinary citizens who consumed alcohol.” With the court’s post-_Bruen_ approach to the Second Amendment still in flux, it is hard to predict exactly how the justices will resolve the case. The six-justice conservative majority appears to be broadly sympathetic to Second Amendment claims. The court’s decision in _Rahimi_ showed a willingness to uphold broad federal restrictions on gun ownership that address modern issues, even if there wasn’t a directly applicable founding-era analogue. At the same time, a law that criminalizes gun ownership for “addiction” to controlled substances may bring more skepticism than allegations of domestic violence. While early American legislatures categorically disqualified certain groups of people from gun ownership, drug users were not among them. Even restrictions for “drunkards” and “the insane” were not necessarily permanent. Either way, the Supreme Court will be required to elaborate on what kind of historical evidence can be used in the history-and-tradition test, as well as where to draw the line between modern issues and historical constraints. As the wave of post-_Bruen_ litigation has shown, even modest changes to the court’s new test can have a significant impact on the prevalence of gun ownership in modern American life. Oral arguments will likely take place this spring, and a decision will follow some time before the end of the court’s term in late June.

US v Simpson: #5thCir affirms felon-in-possession conviction, rejects #2ndAmendment challenge: prior offense of evading arrest by vehicle was violent crime supporting conviction #Bruen #criminallaw #lawsky #guns #appellatesky baffc.net/4mvhotX

US v Mancilla: #5thCir affirms felon-in-possession conviction: #2ndAmendment challenge by defendant with prior #drugtrafficking offenses was foreclosed by precedent #Bruen #criminallaw #lawsky #guns #appellatesky baffc.net/4mvhotX

US v Sereal: #5thCir affirms conviction/sentence for felon in possession: #2ndAmendment #Bruen challenge failed; no #plainerror in applying #USSG crime-of-violence enhancement based on LA aggravated #assault conviction #Garner #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/4nguSu7

US v Peterson: #5thCir affirms, rejecting #2ndAmendment challenge to indictment for possessing unregistered suppressor in violation of #NFA & #4thAmendment challenge to #ATF's search of #firearm dealer's home #Bruen #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/47QMnN7

US v Clark: #5thCir affirms, rejecting #SecondAmendment & #EqualProtection challenges to lifetime #disarmament by #felon in possession who was on probation for LA felony aggravated #assault with a firearm #Bruen #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/4mo6QgN

US v Morgan: #5thCir affirms felon-in-possession conviction based on prior LA felony for illegal use of weapon, finds #SecondAmendment as-applied challenge preserved but rejects it, refuses remand #guns #criminallaw #Bruen #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/3J51N6f

US v Kimble: #5thCir affirms conviction for felon in possession, rejects #SecondAmendment challenge: disarming drug traffickers accords w/nation's history & tradition of regulating #firearms #concur #guns #Bruen #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/4eyc72f

US v Reyes: #5thCir affirms felon-in-possession convictions/sentence, rejects constitutional challenges: #2ndAmendment facial & #CommerceClause challenges foreclosed; no #2ndAmendment violation as applied #Bruen #Rahimi #appellatesky #lawsky baffc.net/4l25vf1

The 10th Circuit joins the 6th and 5th in upholding 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)(C)(ii) against a facial Second Amendment challenge post-Rahimi in United States v. Gordon. www.ca10.uscourts.gov/sites/ca10/f... #Bruen #Rahimi #domesticviolence

The 4th Circuit upheld Maryland's firearm purchaser licensing law, called a handgun qualification license, against a Second Amendment challenge in MSI v. Moore. #Bruen www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/212...

The 4th Circuit also determined that some applications of 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(9) are constitutional under the historical step of the #Bruen framework. It wrote that the historical surety and going armed laws #SCOTUS relied on to uphold 922(g)(8) also apply to 922(g)(9) ...

Regarding the plain text step of the #Bruen framework the 4th Circuit wrote "The parties have not spilled ink on Bruen’s first step, and we need not do so either."The 4th Circuit noted that #SCOTUS in #Rahimi skipped the first step.

The 4th Circuit (King, Agee, and Harris) joins the 6th Circuit in upholding the federal prohibition on firearm possession by persons convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence against a facial 2A challenge in United States v. Nutter. www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/u... #Rahimi #Bruen

Did The Supreme Court Just Walk Away From Bruen ~ VIDEO Was Bruen, the landmark decision that rea...

www.ammoland.com/2025/04/did-the-supreme-...

#Gun #Rights #News #Antonyuk #Case #Arbalest #Quarrel #Bruen #Decision #New #York

Event Attributes

11th Circuit en banc upholds Florida law that prohibits persons under 21 from purchasing a firearm against a Second Amendment challenge. #Bruen
media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...

Jacobson v. Worth (24-782 @8thCir): Whether #SecondAmendment permits age-based restrictions on public pistol carry for 18-20 year olds. Builds on/challenges #Bruen historical analysis framework. https://tinyurl.com/2dmsnm6a

Antonyuk v. James (24-795 @2ndCir): Whether #SecondAmendment requires 1791 historical analysis & bars "good moral character" assessments for concealed carry. Challenges #Bruen state licensing regime. https://tinyurl.com/23l8v6vo

Wade v. Univ. Michigan (24-773 @MichiganCourts): Whether #SecondAmendment allows criminal ordinance prohibiting firearm possession on entire university campus via single official's discretion. Challenges #Bruen sensitive-places doctrine. https://tinyurl.com/22ypyz94

Jacobson v. Worth (24-782 @8thCir): Whether Minnesota's #SecondAmendment age-21 public carry pistol permit restriction comports with constitutional principles. Builds on/challenges #Bruen historical analysis framework. https://tinyurl.com/2dmsnm6a

Wade v. Univ. Michigan ([@MichCir]): Whether #SecondAmendment allows criminal ordinance prohibiting firearm possession on university campus via single official's discretion. Challenges #Bruen sensitive-places doctrine. https://tinyurl.com/22ypyz94