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The Supreme Court’s gun decision on Thursday was technically unanimous. But it was narrow.
The ruling found the government cannot criminally prosecute a man for firearm possession simply because he admitted to smoking marijuana a few times a week.
Beneath the surface, the justices split.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito and liberal Justice Elena Kagan formed an odd couple, jointly insisting the court’s opinion went too far.
The two other liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, appeared ready to blow up conservatives’ entire approach to gun rights.
And Justice Clarence Thomas said he wants to go further and invalidate federal gun control laws for reasons unrelated to the Second Amendment. The divisions reveal some of the broader questions that remain unresolved about the constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Judges have been grappling with the test the conservative majority laid out four years ago, which requires that gun control measures have a historical analogue to survive.
Still, the unanimous bottom line left Second Amendment advocates pleased.
John Commerford, the executive director of the National Rifle Association’s lobbying and legal arm, called the decision a “major victory.”
“No one should be deprived of their God-given right to keep and bear arms for engaging in nonviolent conduct, and there is no historical justification for doing so,” he said in a statement.
The decision leaves many questions unanswered, however.
“In many respects, this case is a narrow one,” Justice Neil Gorsuch cautioned in the majority opinion.
The decision doesn’t entirely strike down the criminal charge at issue. It leaves the door open for prosecutions if the government can prove the individual was under the influence of an unlawful drug at the time they were discovered with a gun. The case focused on marijuana, which is being rescheduled. But the charge also covers users of other drugs. Hunter Biden became one recent example. Until his father pardoned him, he had argued his indictment for gun possession while using crack cocaine violated the Second Amendment.
And altogether, unlawful drug users are still just one category of people barred from possessing guns under federal law.
That list spans felons, people in the country unlawfully, those dishonorably discharged from the military and more. A barrage of challenges raising those issues continues to land at the justices’ feet that they have yet to take up.
Thomas, the court’s longest-serving conservative, suggested on Thursday the provisions should all be reconsidered in a future case. But not just because of the Second Amendment.
In a solo opinion, Thomas said the bans appear “to exceed Congress’s powers under the Commerce Clause.” The Constitution only hands Congress authority to regulate interstate commerce, and Thomas raised concerns the restrictions also criminalize intrastate gun possession.
“Gentlemen, start your engines,” Judicial Crisis Network President Carrie Severino, a former Thomas clerk, reacted in a social media post.
Thursday’s decision also garnered attention for bringing out a rare pairing.
It was the first time that Alito and Kagan joined for a concurrence of their own since 2013, according to SCOTUSGami, a social media account that tracks unique lineups among the justices.
The duo didn’t sign onto Gorsuch’s majority opinion. They said he went too far.
The government had defended disarming drug users by analogizing it to founding-era restrictions on habitual drunkards. Alito and Kagan wanted the opinion to point out those laws referred to people who “drank so much, so often” and merely rule it is not fair to compare them to an occasional marijuana user.
“We need not say more to decide this case, and I would for that reason say no more,” Alito wrote.
Kostas Moros, director of legal research and education for the Second Amendment Foundation, said it was not entirely clear why the pair penned it.
In an explanatory thread for the gun rights group, he wrote that “it mostly seems to just restate a simplified version of the Opinion of the Court, just slightly narrowed. I guess that’s enough for Alito and Kagan to want to write separately?”
Other divisions were pronounced. The two other liberal justices said the case showed a need to go back to the drawing board entirely.
Jackson, joined by Sotomayor, said the court should reconsider the conservative majority’s 2022 blockbuster expansion of gun rights that established the historical analogue requirement. Known as the Bruen test, the duo called it “unworkable.”
“In a future case that squarely presents the question, we should consider whether to retire the failed Bruen experiment and return to an explicit assessment of Congress’s ends and means when deciding the constitutionality of firearm restrictions,” Jackson wrote.
The divisions all come as the Supreme Court prepares to apply its Second Amendment test to another gun law.
The justices are mulling whether Hawaii’s default concealed carry ban on private property is constitutional, a case called Wolford v. Lopez. A decision is expected in the looming final rush of decisions before the court’s summer recess. The court has indicated it expects to release its next opinion on Tuesday.
Haley Proctor, an associate law professor at Notre Dame, said the gap could be a sign that decision will similarly be narrow.
“It does strike me as significant that the Court did not need to release them on the same date,” Proctor said in an email. “That suggests that Wolford will not say anything that meaningfully changes the Court’s core framework for analyzing Second Amendment challenges.”
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Carrie Severino Clarence Thomas Elena Kagan Hunter Biden Ketanji Brown Jackson Neil Gorsuch Samuel Alito Sonia SotomayorCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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