On June 18, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled that federal prosecutors can't bar marijuana users from owning guns. The case, United States v. Hemani, started with a 2022 FBI search of Ali Danial Hemani's Texas home, where agents found a pistol, 60 grams of marijuana, and cocaine. Hemani told them he smokes weed every other day. A 1968 federal law made that combination a felony, punishable by up to 15 years. Nine justices said that went too far.

1. The 1968 Law Had No Constitutional Basis (NRA, Gun Owners of America, Firearms Policy Coalition)

The gun rights camp has been building toward this ruling since the court rewrote Second Amendment law in 2022.

The law couldn't survive its own history. Justice Gorsuch's majority opinion rejected the government's key argument: that early American laws targeting "habitual drunkards" justified the ban. Those laws required proof someone was "practically incapacitated." The 1968 statute required no showing of incapacity — it kicked in the moment a federal agent decided you were a "user." The word is never defined in the statute.

The implications were absurd. Gorsuch made the point directly in the opinion: under the government's logic, prosecutors could charge "a husband who regularly takes his wife's prescription Ambien to sleep" and "a college student who routinely uses a friend's Adderall to cram for exams." The law covered all controlled substances, not just marijuana.

The gun rights camp got exactly what it came for. John Commerford, the NRA-ILA's executive director, called it "a major victory for the Second Amendment and peaceable gun owners across America." Gun Owners of America called the original charge against Hemani "outrageous," saying the government was criminalizing conduct "widely tolerated at the founding."

2. But Striking It Down Leaves a Real Gap (Everytown for Gun Safety)

Gun safety groups sided with the Trump DOJ on this one — not out of politics, but because they think the restriction served a real purpose.

Drug users with guns are a real public safety concern. Everytown for Gun Safety, which usually opposes the Trump administration on gun law, took the same side as the DOJ here. Their core argument: even a vague law that keeps guns away from people whose judgment may be regularly impaired by substance use serves a legitimate public safety purpose.

The ruling makes every future prosecution harder to win. Gorsuch's opinion didn't strike down the statute outright, but it made the standard dramatically harder to meet. Prosecutors now need to show a specific individual's drug use makes them dangerous, or that they were actively intoxicated while possessing the gun. Congress didn't design the law to work this way. Notably, 18 states that have legalized marijuana still filed briefs supporting the government's position — suggesting the public safety concern crosses the ideological lines you'd expect.

The historical-evidence test is itself the problem, they argue. Everytown and gun safety groups argue that the Bruen framework — which requires gun regulations to have 18th-century analogues — is unworkable. Even two of the justices who ruled against the government agreed: Justices Sotomayor and Jackson concurred with the outcome but said the Bruen framework is "unworkable" and "vulnerable to inconsistent and arbitrary application."

3. The Real Problem Is Federal Prohibition, Not the Gun Law (NORML, ACLU)

To drug policy advocates, this case was never really about guns.

Federal marijuana law is increasingly incoherent. More than 40 states have legalized cannabis — medically, recreationally, or both — and people following state law have faced federal prosecution and gun confiscation for doing something their state says is legal. The Hemani case came directly out of that contradiction — it was never just a gun rights dispute.

The government undermined its own argument. Gorsuch called it out in his opinion: the administration recently reclassified marijuana as having "a lower potential for dependence and abuse" and "a currently accepted medical use" — then argued in court that every regular cannabis user is too dangerous to own a gun. You can't have it both ways.

Drug policy advocates wanted more than this ruling gave them. Joseph A. Bondy, chair of NORML's Board of Directors, argued in the group's Supreme Court brief that the law is "unconstitutionally vague as applied in states that authorize medical or adult-use cannabis" because ordinary citizens can't reasonably tell whether their state-permitted conduct still makes them a federal prohibited person. NORML also pointed out that many legal prescription drugs cause equal or greater impairment than cannabis, but none of them trigger a gun ban. Cecillia Wang, the ACLU's national legal director, said the ruling makes clear the government can't treat marijuana use alone as grounds to strip gun rights.

Where This Lands

Gun rights advocates got what they asked for: a ruling that vague, historically unmoored laws can't disarm otherwise law-abiding Americans. Gun safety groups say the ruling weakened a real protection, and Congress needs to write a better-targeted replacement. Drug policy advocates say the ruling is a symptom — federal marijuana prohibition is broken, and the court just exposed one of its ugliest side effects. The opinion gave Congress a narrow map for what a constitutional drug-user gun restriction would look like. Whether Congress writes one is a separate question.

Sources