The Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Tuesday in a case that sits at the intersection of two of the most politically charged issues in American law: gun rights and cannabis. At stake is whether the federal government can strip Second Amendment rights from the millions of Americans who use marijuana in compliance with state law — and based on the questioning from the bench, a majority of justices appear unconvinced that it can.
The case, Daniels v. United States, challenges 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(3), the federal statute that prohibits any “unlawful user of or person addicted to any controlled substance” from possessing a firearm or ammunition. The provision has been on the books since 1968, but it has taken on new constitutional significance in the wake of the Court’s landmark 2022 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, which fundamentally changed how courts evaluate gun regulations.
What emerged during nearly two hours of argument was a Court struggling — across ideological lines — to find a principled basis for treating cannabis users differently from alcohol users, prescription drug users, or any other category of Americans whose substance use does not automatically disqualify them from exercising constitutional rights.
The Case Background
Patrick Daniels was convicted in federal court after law enforcement discovered firearms in his home during a search that also turned up a small quantity of marijuana and drug paraphernalia. Daniels was not accused of any violent conduct. He was not intoxicated at the time of the search. His sole disqualifying act, under federal law, was being a cannabis user who also owned guns.
Daniels challenged his conviction on Second Amendment grounds, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with him — ruling that Section 922(g)(3) is unconstitutional as applied to marijuana users. The decision created a circuit split, as the Third, Fourth, and Eighth Circuits had upheld the statute, and the federal government petitioned the Supreme Court to resolve the conflict.
The constitutional question is framed by Bruen, which held that gun regulations are valid only if the government can demonstrate they are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” This standard replaced the two-step framework that lower courts had used for decades, requiring the government to identify historical analogs from the founding era or the Reconstruction period that justify modern restrictions.
For Section 922(g)(3), that historical burden is steep. The federal government must show that the founding generation recognized a principle that substance users — as a categorical class, regardless of whether they are currently impaired — could be disarmed. The historical record on this point is, at best, thin.
What the Justices Said
The oral arguments revealed skepticism from justices across the ideological spectrum, though for different reasons.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored a concurrence in Bruen emphasizing the importance of text and history, pressed the government’s attorney repeatedly on the breadth of the statute. “This law doesn’t require addiction. It doesn’t require impairment. It doesn’t require any connection between the drug use and the firearm,” Gorsuch observed. “A person who used marijuana once at a party three weeks ago is an ‘unlawful user’ under your reading. Does the Second Amendment really have nothing to say about that?”
The government’s attorney, arguing that Congress has broad authority to disarm categories of people who pose elevated risks of violence, faced resistance from both flanks. Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the statute applies to users of all controlled substances — including those legally prescribed — and questioned whether the government’s logic would permit Congress to disarm anyone taking Adderall or Ambien without a prescription. Justice Samuel Alito, meanwhile, challenged the government to explain why cannabis users are more dangerous than heavy alcohol users, who face no comparable firearms disability.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson focused on the discriminatory enforcement patterns embedded in the statute. “We know who gets prosecuted under this provision,” she said. “The data show it is disproportionately people in communities where cannabis enforcement has been most aggressive. At some point, doesn’t the selective nature of enforcement bear on the constitutional analysis?”
Chief Justice John Roberts appeared to seek a narrower resolution, asking whether the Court could rule that the statute is unconstitutional as applied to cannabis users in states where marijuana is legal, without striking down the broader prohibition on substance users possessing firearms. This approach would preserve the statute’s application to users of methamphetamine, heroin, and other substances while carving out cannabis — but it would require the Court to draw a line that the text of the statute does not draw.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote a detailed dissent in a Seventh Circuit case on felon firearm rights before joining the Supreme Court, asked pointed questions about the government’s historical evidence. The founding-era sources the government cited — colonial-era laws disarming certain groups and 19th-century restrictions on carrying weapons while intoxicated — drew skepticism. “Laws against carrying a weapon while drunk are not the same as laws permanently disarming someone because they drink,” Barrett noted. “You’re asking us to make a significant inferential leap.”
The Rescheduling Problem
Perhaps the most consequential line of questioning involved the federal government’s pending rescheduling of cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances Act. Several justices seized on the fact that the same administration defending the firearms ban is simultaneously moving to reclassify cannabis as a substance with accepted medical use and lower abuse potential.
Justice Elena Kagan was direct: “Your brief argues that marijuana use makes people unpredictable and potentially violent. Your own administration’s rescheduling rationale says the opposite — that marijuana has accepted medical benefits and a lower potential for abuse than Schedule I implies. How do we reconcile those two positions?”
The government’s attorney argued that the rescheduling determination and the firearms prohibition operate under different statutory frameworks and reflect different policy judgments. But this argument visibly struggled to gain traction. Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that if cannabis is rescheduled to Schedule III, it would sit alongside testosterone, ketamine, and anabolic steroids — substances whose users are not typically characterized as uniquely dangerous and whose prescribed use would not trigger Section 922(g)(3) at all.
The rescheduling angle introduces a practical wrinkle as well. If cannabis moves to Schedule III and a person uses it pursuant to a valid prescription, that person would arguably no longer be an “unlawful user” of a controlled substance. The firearms disability would fall away — but only for those with prescriptions, not for the tens of millions of recreational users in states where adult-use cannabis is legal under state law but remains federally controlled.
This creates a constitutional paradox that several justices appeared to find troubling: the same substance, used by two people in the same state, would disqualify only the recreational user from possessing a firearm — even though both users are consuming the identical product with identical effects.
Implications for Cannabis Consumers
A ruling striking down or narrowing Section 922(g)(3) as applied to cannabis users would have immediate practical consequences for millions of Americans. An estimated 55 million adults in the United States used cannabis in 2025, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Under current federal law, every one of them is technically prohibited from purchasing or possessing a firearm.
The firearms disability is not theoretical. ATF Form 4473 — the federal form that every buyer must complete when purchasing a firearm from a licensed dealer — asks directly whether the buyer is an “unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.” Answering yes results in a denial. Answering no while being a cannabis user constitutes a federal felony carrying up to ten years in prison.
For residents of the 38 states that have legalized cannabis in some form, the collision between state legalization and federal firearms law has created an untenable situation. State-legal cannabis consumers must choose between exercising their state-sanctioned right to use cannabis and their federal constitutional right to bear arms. Gun rights organizations and cannabis advocacy groups — an unlikely coalition — have both filed amicus briefs arguing that this forced election is constitutionally impermissible.
The case also has implications for the cannabis industry. Several states have considered or implemented systems that cross-reference medical marijuana patient registries with firearms databases — a practice that has chilled participation in medical cannabis programs. Patients in states like Pennsylvania and Hawaii have reported choosing not to obtain medical marijuana cards specifically because of the firearms consequences. A favorable ruling would remove this barrier, potentially expanding medical cannabis enrollment significantly.
What to Expect
The Court is expected to issue its decision by late June, when the current term concludes. Based on the oral arguments, several possible outcomes are in play.
The broadest ruling would hold that Section 922(g)(3) is facially unconstitutional — meaning the provision cannot be applied to any drug user, regardless of the substance. This outcome appears unlikely. Even the most skeptical justices seemed unwilling to suggest that the government cannot disarm someone who is actively impaired by methamphetamine or PCP.
A more likely outcome is an as-applied ruling that strikes down the statute’s application to cannabis users, particularly those in states where cannabis is legal. This would leave the broader provision intact while recognizing that the historical and practical justifications for disarming cannabis users do not survive Bruen scrutiny.
A third possibility is a remand — sending the case back to the lower courts with instructions to apply the Bruen framework more rigorously, without resolving the ultimate constitutional question. This would delay a definitive answer but would signal the Court’s skepticism of the government’s position.
Whatever the outcome, the case represents a collision point between two areas of law that have been evolving in opposite directions. Gun rights jurisprudence has expanded dramatically since Heller in 2008 and Bruen in 2022. Cannabis legalization has expanded dramatically across the states. The federal statute that penalizes the intersection of these two rights was written in 1968, when cannabis was universally illegal and the Second Amendment had not yet been recognized as an individual right.
The law has not kept pace with either development. The Court now has the opportunity to address that gap — and based on Tuesday’s arguments, a majority appears inclined to do so.