A lot of times, the cases that test our rights don’t involve particularly good people. That’s because most of the people who have standing to challenge those laws are criminals who have been convicted of laws that may or may not have violated the Constitution.
Take cases of people being prosecuted for owning guns while using drugs like marijuana. While that sounds like something that’s not that big of a deal, many of those people either get a slap on the wrist or just aren’t prosecuted. When there are other drugs involved, though, things can change.
That’s something to keep in mind as the Supreme Court announced it would hear the Hermani case on March 2.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on March 2 in a case on the federal government’s efforts to prosecute a Texas man for violating a federal statute that prohibits gun possession by users of illegal drugs. That case, United States v. Hemani, is one of seven cases scheduled for the justices’ February argument session, which will begin on Feb. 23 and end on March 4.
Prosecutors brought the charge against Ali Danial Hemani after FBI agents found a Glock 9 mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana, and 4.7 grams of cocaine at his home, which led the United States to charge him with violating the law now at the center of the case. Hemani argued that applying the law to him violated the Second Amendment and that the charges against him should therefore be dismissed.
With the government’s agreement, U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant granted that request. The district court relied on a 2023 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit that struck down a conviction under the same law when “the jury did not necessarily find that” the defendant in that case “was presently or even recently engaged in unlawful drug use.”
After the 5th Circuit upheld Mazzant’s ruling, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to grant review, which it agreed to do in October.
The historic precedent being used to justify the prohibition tends to look toward those laws during the founding era that prohibited carrying a firearm while drunk.
Intoxication is intoxication, and we often don’t differentiate between how someone is intoxicated in such measures, so a law prohibiting someone high from carrying would fit that precent almost perfectly.
The question before the justices will likely hinge on whether the analog is close enough.
The Rahimi case made it clear that the Supreme Court didn’t need a perfect analog, but that leaves a lot of questions as to just what is an analog to a law that’s close enough to matter. Thus far, the case looks like lower court figured it wasn’t remotely the same thing.
Where this matters is that marijuana is legal at the state level to some degree or another in multiple states. It’s also been rescheduled to a Schedule 3 controlled substance, which means there is medical use for it. That changes some of the equation on marijuana and gun ownership, but it doesn’t change everything.
This particular case is going to be an important one in establishing just where the limits lie.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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