Guns Prevail

In 2022, FBI agents investigating Ali Hemani, a Texas man suspected of terrorism ties, searched his family’s home and found a Glock 9mm handgun, about 60 grams of marijuana, and 4.7 grams of cocaine. Hemani cooperated, admitting that he smoked marijuana about every other day. The terrorism suspicions went nowhere, but in 2023 a grand jury indicted him under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), which makes it a felony for an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance to possess a firearm. The government never claimed Hemani was high when he had the gun, that he was addicted, or that drugs had ever made him dangerous. Its case rested on his status as a regular user.

Hemani moved to dismiss, arguing the law violated the Second Amendment as applied to him. The district court agreed and the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The Fifth Circuit was one of several courts that had been narrowing the statute since the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision, which requires the government to justify gun laws by pointing to the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The Justice Department appealed anyway. The Supreme Court granted review on October 20, 2025, heard argument on March 2, 2026, and issued its decision on June 18, 2026.

Hemani argued that the government had to show a historical tradition of disarming people like him, and that it couldn’t. A person who smokes marijuana a few times a week, with no showing of dangerousness, looks nothing like the people early American laws actually restricted.

The government argued that § 922(g)(3) belongs to a long tradition of laws aimed at “habitual drunkards,” and that both target users of intoxicating substances who are dangerous enough that their liberty can be restricted to protect the public. In its view, the founding-era laws and the modern statute were close enough in purpose to pass muster under Bruen.

The Court ruled 9–0 for Hemani, in an opinion by Justice Gorsuch, holding that prosecuting him under the “unlawful user” provision is inconsistent with the Second Amendment. It found the habitual drunkard comparison failed on three counts. Those laws reached people whose drinking left them truly incapacitated, not everyone who drank often. They were driven by concerns like vagrancy and protecting families from financial ruin, not preventing gun violence. And they came with procedures such as court hearings, while § 922(g)(3) strips gun rights automatically. The Court also worried that letting the government define who counts as “dangerous” by changing drug schedules could allow it to swallow the Second Amendment.

The unanimity is thinner than it looks. Justice Gorsuch wrote for a seven-justice majority. Justice Thomas and Justice Jackson (joined by Justice Sotomayor) wrote separately, and Justice Alito, joined by Justice Kagan, agreed Hemani should win without signing on to the majority’s reasoning. Thomas also questioned whether the law fits within Congress’s Commerce Clause power.

The ruling is deliberately narrow. The Court did not strike down § 922(g)(3). It held only that the government cannot prosecute someone for keeping a gun while using marijuana a few times a week based on his status as a user alone. It left open whether the government could win with individualized proof that a defendant’s drug use makes him dangerous, whether addicts or people who are currently intoxicated can be disarmed, and the status of the felon-in-possession ban. Still, the decision hands defense lawyers a stronger tool and sends Congress a message: a broad ban built on a category of people, with no individualized finding of danger, will have a hard time clearing the Bruen test. For the many people who use marijuana, including medical patients in states where it’s legal, the ruling lowers the risk of federal prosecution for owning a gun, though it doesn’t make it zero.