Supreme Court will decide if ‘habitual drug users’ lose their gun rights under 2nd Amendment
WASHINGTON— The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether “habitual drug users” should lose their gun rights under the 2nd Amendment.
Trump administration advocates federal gun control He is challenging the 1968 law and decisions by two conservative appeals courts that struck down a ban on gun possession by “unlawful users” of illegal drugs, including marijuana.
Trump’s lawyers say this limit on gun rights aligns with early American history, when “ordinary drunks” were prohibited from owning guns.
And this “modest, modern” limit makes sense, they argue, because well-armed drug addicts “pose unique dangers to society—especially because they pose a serious risk of armed, hostile encounters with police officers when they are disabled.”
The government says the ban will only apply to addicts and “habitual users of illegal drugs”, not anyone who has used drugs occasionally or in the past.
The administration’s attorneys told the court that under this interpretation, the law “imposes a limited, inherently temporary restriction – a limitation that the individual can lift at any time by ceasing to use illegal drugs.”
The appeal noted that California and 31 other states have laws restricting gun possession by drug users and drug addicts, all of which could be invalidated by a broad reading of the 2nd Amendment.
The court said that the case of a Texas person and a Pakistani person who were investigated by the FBI for allegedly working with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is considered a foreign terrorist organization, will be heard.
When agents with a search warrant searched Ali Denali Hemani’s home, they found a Glock gun, 60 grams of marijuana and 4.7 grams of cocaine. He told agents he uses marijuana every other day.
He was charged with violating federal gun control law, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that this ban on gun possession violated the 2nd Amendment unless the defendant was under the influence of drugs when arrested.
St. The St. Louis-based 8th Circuit Court of Appeals took a similar view that the gun ban on drug users was unconstitutional.
The Trump administration asked the justices to hear the U.S. v. Hemani case and for two lower courts to overturn it. Arguments are likely to be heard in January.
Last year the judges rejected gun rights demands Another case from Texas ruled that a man accused of domestic violence may lose his right to own a firearm.
In an 8-1 decision, Chief Justice John G. Roberts said that historically, people who “threaten physical harm to others” have lost their legal right to a gun.
