The Supreme Court agreed to take a case Monday over whether a federal law banning illegal drug users from owning guns violates the Second Amendment.
The law at the center of the case was also the basis for one of the three gun charges Hunter Biden, son of former President Joe Biden, was found guilty of by a jury last year. The former president pardoned his son late last year before leaving office.
The case the high court will hear is an appeal from the Justice Department seeking to uphold U.S.C. 922(g)(3), which bans anyone who is “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” from owning a firearm, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found it violated the Second Amendment’s right for people to bear arms.
“The Second Amendment’s right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental right that is essential to ordered liberty. Unjustifiable restrictions on that right present a grave threat to Americans’ most cherished freedoms,” the DOJ’s petition to the Supreme Court said.