A federal appeals court this week cast further doubt on the constitutionality of a federal law that bans gun possession by illegal drug users, overturning the conviction of a Mississippi cannabis consumer who dared to exercise his Second Amendment rights. In a decision published on Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals Court for the 5th Circuit unanimously concluded that the law, 18 USC 922(g)(3), is not "consistent with the Nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."
That is the constitutional test required by the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which overturned that state's restrictions on public possession of handguns. The 5th Circuit's ruling, which upheld an "as applied" challenge, is technically limited to one criminal case. It nevertheless illustrates the difficulties that government lawyers have encountered in trying to satisfy the Bruen test, which made long-accepted gun restrictions newly vulnerable to constitutional challenges.
