Marijuana Users Keep Guns — Supreme Court

Courthouse facade with media crews setting up outside.

The Supreme Court just told the federal government it cannot strip gun rights from Americans just because they use marijuana.

Story Snapshot

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the federal government cannot use marijuana “user” status alone to ban gun ownership.
The decision applies 2022’s Bruen “history and tradition” test and rejects a broad, blanket ban on otherwise law‑abiding users.^[2]
The ruling is a major win for the Second Amendment and a blow to federal overreach born out of the 1960s Gun Control Act.^[3]
The Court left room to disarm truly dangerous or intoxicated people, but not sober citizens labeled “unlawful users.”^[3]

High Court Says: Marijuana Use Alone Cannot Cancel Your Second Amendment

The case, United States v. Hemani, asked if Washington can treat any “unlawful user” of a controlled substance as a second-class citizen with no gun rights.^[2] The law at issue, 18 United States Code § 922(g)(3), has for decades banned gun possession by anyone the government calls an “unlawful user” or someone “addicted to” a controlled substance.^[1] The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had already thrown out the charges against Ali Hemani, saying the statute was unconstitutional when used against a marijuana user who was not impaired while armed.^[1]

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for a unanimous Court according to early reports, built on the 2022 Bruen decision, which requires that any modern gun restriction match the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.^[2] Under that test, the government must point to real founding-era or Reconstruction-era analogues, not just vague safety worries.^[1] In Hemani’s case, the Court ruled that disarming a sober adult based only on marijuana use does not match past American practice.^[2]

Why This Matters for Gun Owners and Trump-Era Conservatives

This decision is about far more than cannabis. It is about whether the federal bureaucracy can dream up new “prohibited person” categories and erase rights by label instead of proof.^[2] The government argued that “habitual” unlawful drug users are like historical “drunkards” and can be banned from owning guns as a group.^[9] But historical laws usually targeted people who were armed while actively intoxicated or who were formally found dangerous, not ordinary citizens who sometimes used a substance.^[18]

The Fifth Circuit, and now the Supreme Court, focused on that key difference: Hemani was not accused of being high with a gun, firing a weapon, or threatening anyone.^[7] Federal agents found a legally purchased firearm in his home along with marijuana, and he admitted regular use.^[7] That was enough for the Biden-era Justice Department to try to brand him a felon under § 922(g)(3), with a potential ten-year prison sentence. The courts responded that the Second Amendment does not allow Washington to disarm a sober, nonviolent citizen on this thin basis.^[3]

Bruen, History, and the End of “Because We Say So” Gun Bans

The Hemani ruling is one more sign that Bruen’s history-and-tradition test has real teeth. In Bruen, the Court said that modern gun laws must line up with historical rules from the founding or Reconstruction era, not modern political preferences.^[1] After Bruen, lower courts struck down several status-based gun bans, including earlier challenges to the same drug-user provision.^[18] In United States v. Connelly, the Fifth Circuit held that the government cannot convict a marijuana-smoking gun owner who was not impaired when he had the firearm.^[3]

Hemani builds on that logic. Historical evidence shows that legislatures sometimes barred carrying guns while drunk or allowed temporary disarmament of people found to be real threats.^[3] But there is no tradition of stripping rights from broad classes of people for life—or for as long as they use a disfavored substance—without any showing of danger.^[18] By rejecting the government’s attempt to stretch old “drunkard” laws to cover all unlawful drug users, the Court pushed back against the kind of creative analogies elites use to justify permanent bureaucratic power.^[9]

A Win With Limits: What the Ruling Does and Does Not Do

Early analysis stresses that the Court did not erase every possible restriction tied to drugs or intoxication.^[3] Instead, the justices held that the government cannot rely on § 922(g)(3) to prosecute someone like Hemani, whose only “crime” was regular marijuana use with a lawfully owned firearm and no evidence of impairment or misuse.^[2]^[3] That means Washington can no longer use this statute to automatically turn millions of otherwise law-abiding marijuana users into prohibited persons.

Today, the Supreme Court just ruled 9-0 in United States v. Hemani that the federal government can’t prosecute casual marijuana users for owning guns under the current law.

They struck down the application of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) against a Texas man who used marijuana regularly…

— Peace Advocate (@AlaskanNative95) June 18, 2026

The decision leaves room for future cases where the facts look different, such as armed drug dealing, heavy addiction paired with violence, or carrying while obviously intoxicated.^[3]^[18] In those settings, the government may still argue that temporary disarmament matches historical practice. But the main message is clear: labels are not enough. To take away a core constitutional right, the federal government must point to real history and real danger, not vague fear of citizens it does not like.