In a decision published Monday, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed that the federal government violated the Second Amendment in its prosecution of Patrick Darnell Daniels Jr. for illegally possessing a firearm because he also consumed cannabis.
Judges from the Southern District of Mississippi Court unanimously ruled that the government’s prosecution of Daniels Jr. for violating 18 USC 922(g) (3) – which makes it a felony for an “unlawful user” of controlled substances to possess a firearm – “is inconsistent” with the U.S.’s “‘history and tradition’ of gun regulation” and fails the test the Supreme Court established in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022).
“The government has not pointed to sufficiently analogous historical laws to establish why Daniels himself should be considered presumptively dangerous. And, as explained, even had the government supplied sufficient historical briefing to support a theory of dangerousness, the jury instruction employed in Daniels’s trial was too open-ended to support his conviction because it left open the possibility that Daniels had not even unlawfully used a controlled substance in several weeks.” — United States of America v. Patrick Darnell Daniels, Jr.