The Hunter Biden Gun Law Just Got Shredded by a Unanimous Supreme Court

The Supreme Court delivered a unanimous smackdown Thursday to federal prosecutors who’ve been stretching a gun law so far beyond its reasonable limits that even the most liberal justices couldn’t stomach it anymore. And yes, this is the same law used to prosecute Hunter Biden, which should tell you something about how aggressively the government has been wielding this particular weapon.

Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in a case involving Ali Hemani, a Texas man who had the audacity to keep a handgun in his home for self-defense while admitting he smoked marijuana every other day. FBI agents raided his home, found the gun, and federal prosecutors charged him with a felony. Let that sink in for a moment. A man exercising what should be two separate rights under our Constitution got hit with federal charges because bureaucrats decided those rights couldn’t coexist.

The government’s argument was laughably thin. They tried comparing modern marijuana users to historical “habitual drunkards” who were sometimes restricted from gun ownership centuries ago. Gorsuch and the court weren’t buying it. The historical laws targeted people whose substance abuse left them genuinely unable to manage their own affairs or posed clear dangers to others. The modern federal statute just throws a blanket over anyone who uses illegal drugs regularly, regardless of whether they’re a threat to anyone.

Here’s where it gets really interesting. The court pointed out that under the government’s interpretation, this law could strip Second Amendment rights from a college kid borrowing his roommate’s Adderall during finals week or a stressed husband taking his wife’s Ambien to get some sleep. That’s not a slippery slope argument. That’s the actual text of the law as prosecutors have been applying it.

The federal government has spent years backing away from marijuana enforcement. They’ve reduced penalties, looked the other way as states legalized it in various forms, and actively worked to reclassify marijuana to a less restrictive drug schedule. Most states now permit some form of marijuana use, whether medical or recreational. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t simultaneously argue that marijuana users are so categorically dangerous they forfeit constitutional rights while also admitting the drug isn’t dangerous enough to enforce the laws against it consistently.

Gorsuch noted something crucial that prosecutors never bothered to allege. They never claimed Hemani was addicted to marijuana. They never suggested he’d used a firearm while intoxicated. They never presented evidence he’d threatened anyone or posed a danger to himself or others. Their entire case rested on his admission that he smoked pot about every other day. That’s it. That’s the threat to public safety that supposedly justified stripping away his Second Amendment rights.

This matters beyond just gun rights or drug policy. This case exposes how federal prosecutors have been using overly broad statutes to criminalize behavior that poses no actual threat to anyone. It’s the kind of prosecutorial overreach that should concern anyone who values individual liberty and limited government, regardless of where you stand on marijuana legalization or gun control.

The ruling is narrow, and the court made that clear. They explicitly didn’t address whether the government can disarm actual addicts or people who are presently intoxicated. Those questions remain open. But what the court did say is that the government can’t just wave its hands and declare an entire category of people unfit to exercise constitutional rights without showing some actual connection between their behavior and a genuine threat.

Justice Alito and Justice Kagan concurred only in the judgment, which means they agreed with the outcome but perhaps not every detail of Gorsuch’s reasoning. That’s fine. What matters is that all nine justices looked at this prosecution and said the government went too far. In an era of deep judicial divisions, that unanimity speaks volumes.

The implications for Hunter Biden’s case are obvious, though the court didn’t specifically address it. His lawyers are probably already drafting motions as we speak. Whether you think he should face consequences for his actions or not, he deserves to face them under laws that actually pass constitutional muster.

This decision reinforces a principle that conservatives have been arguing for years. The Constitution means what it says, and the government doesn’t get to rewrite it through creative prosecutions just because enforcing it as written might be inconvenient. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. If the government wants to restrict that right, it needs to show its restrictions align with historical traditions of firearms regulation and serve a genuine public safety purpose. Vague fears about what someone might do someday don’t cut it.

Related: A Small Town Said No to Flying Pride Flags and the Response Proved Them Right