After Rahimi, Bruen Remains Tanned, Rested, and Ready for Future Cases

By focusing on Rahimi’s “dangerous” conduct, the high court did not foreclose a series of other challenges to federal disarmament laws already pending at the Supreme Court, including one related to Hunter Biden’s felony gun case.

One of those cases that has been appealed to the justices centers on a Mississippi man who is challenging a federal law that makes it a crime to own a weapon while being an “unlawful user of or addicted to” illegal drugs. The 5th Circuit sided with the man last August, saying the nation’s history and tradition did not support that restriction.

What the high court ultimately does with that case will be closely watched because it is the same law at issue in [Hunter] Biden’s gun case in Delaware.

Biden has already raised the 5th Circuit case, US v. Daniels, in an attempt to throw out his own case. The judge who oversaw his trial denied that effort and Biden was later convicted of violating that law and two other federal firearms laws. His lawyers are expected to mount another challenge to the constitutionality of the law in a post-conviction appeal.

Friday’s opinion did not “doom” Biden’s challenge, said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at the University of Texas School of Law, but it did not appear to “materially assist” the arguments that the president’s son is making. …

In addition to the Daniels case, the high court is juggling several other potentially significant Second Amendment cases.

One deals with a Pennsylvania man’s challenge to a federal law prohibiting felons, including those who are non-violent, from possessing firearms. The man at the center of that case was convicted of welfare fraud after he lied on a form to obtain food stamps.

The majority rejected an argument raised by the Biden administration that people who are not “responsible” could also be barred from owning guns. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar presented that argument with an eye toward several other challenges pending to similar federal gun prohibitions that involve non-violent criminal activity.

But Roberts wrote that “responsible” is a vague term and that the “question was simply not presented.”

Other cases waiting in the wings at the high court deal with challenges to Illinois’ ban on “assault weapons” and New York’s regulations on carrying concealed firearms.

— Tierney Sneed, Devan Cole and John Fritzs in Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the domestic violence gun ban