CONSTITUTIONAL INTERPRETATIONS

A federal statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), has been construed by the federal Justice Department to prohibit a person who regularly and frequently uses marijuana in violation of the law, but without any other illegal misconduct, from keeping a firearm in his or her home. In United States v. Hemani, U.S. Sup.Ct.Slip Op. of June 18, 2026, the United States Supreme Court ruled the statute, as so construed, to be a violation of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Second Amendment reads as follows:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

U.S. Const., Amendment II.

The original provisions of the federal Constitution provide this context to that Amendment:

The Congress shall have Power . . . To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia . . . .

U.S. Const., Article I, Section 8.

The English Bill of Rights, enacted by the British Parliament in 1689 and remaining active in the British colonies until the American Revolution, provides this historical context to the Second Amendment:

That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law . . . .

Altogether, the Second Amendment’s words, and the contexts in which they were written and adopted, provide that once an American citizen is armed in compliance with the laws enacted by Congress, the citizen is entitled “to keep” that “arm” and to use it for any lawful purpose, until he or she becomes subject to Militia discipline and disarming for some violation of law.  Under the federal Constitution as a whole, the state and federal legislatures elected by the people to govern the people, should be the ones who decide what usages of guns are “allowed by law,” as opposed to unelected judges and Supreme Court Justices.

When the Second Amendment is read this way, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) does not violate that Amendment’s provisions. Congress may have chosen[1] to disqualify regular marijuana users from militia service and firearm usage. However the present-day Supreme Court of the United States does not read the Second Amendment this way. Instead, the Count inappropriately found a Constitutional violation in what the Court regarded to be a minor violation of an outdated drug law.

/s/ Dan D. Rhea

[1] The construction of the statute applied by the Justice Department may not be the correct construction.