SCOTUS Agrees To Consider Whether Drug Users Can Own Guns

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider whether it is constitutional to prohibit users of illegal drugs from owning guns.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals previously held that a federal law prohibiting anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from possessing firearms violates the Second Amendment in most applications.

The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) urged the Supreme Court in June to reverse the decision and uphold the statute.

“By disqualifying only habitual users of illegal drugs from possessing firearms, the statute imposes a limited, inherently temporary restriction—one which the individual can remove at any time simply by ceasing his unlawful drug use,” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in the government’s petition. “This restriction provides a modest, modern analogue of much harsher founding-era restrictions on habitual drunkards, and so it stands solidly within our Nation’s history and tradition of regulation.”

The case stems from Ali Danial Heman’s successful challenge to his indictment under the statute, which he violated by owning a pistol and habitually using marijuana.

Heman, a dual citizen of the U.S. and Pakistan, both uses and deals drugs. He first caught the FBI’s attention in 2019 when a search of his phone at the border “revealed communications suggesting that he was poised to commit fraud at the direction of suspected affiliates of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a designated foreign terrorist organization,” according to the government’s brief.

The government notes that “at least 32 States and territories have enacted similar laws restricting the possession of firearms by drug users and drug addicts.”