Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca3-21-02835/USCOURTS-ca3-21-02835-3/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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PRECEDENTIAL

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT

______________

No. 21-2835

______________

BRYAN DAVID RANGE,

Appellant

v.

ATTORNEY GENERAL UNITED STATES OF AMERICA;

REGINA LOMBARDO, Acting Director, Bureau of Alcohol, 

Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

______________

On Appeal from the United States District Court 

for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania

(D.C. No. 5:20-CV-03488)

District Judge: Honorable Gene E.K. Pratter

______________

Argued before Merits Panel on September 19, 2022

Argued En Banc on February 15, 2023

Reargued En Banc on October 9, 2024 on Remand from the 

Supreme Court of the United States

______________

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2

Before: CHAGARES, Chief Judge, JORDAN, HARDIMAN, 

SHWARTZ, KRAUSE, RESTREPO, BIBAS, PORTER,

MATEY, PHIPPS, FREEMAN, MONTGOMERY-REEVES,

CHUNG, ROTH,*and AMBRO,**

Circuit Judges.

(Filed: December 23, 2024)

William V. Bergstrom

Peter A. Patterson [Argued]

David H. Thompson

Cooper & Kirk

1523 New Hampshire Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC 20036

Michael P. Gottlieb

Vangrossi & Recchuiti

319 Swede Street

Norristown, PA 19401

Counsel for the Appellant

Joseph G. S. Greenlee

Firearms Policy Coalition Action

5550 Painted Mirage Road

*

Judge Roth is participating as a member of the en banc court 

pursuant to 3d Cir. I.O.P. 9.6.4.

** Judge Ambro assumed senior status on February 6, 2023 and 

elected to continue participating as a member of the en banc 

court pursuant to 3d Cir. I.O.P. 9.6.4.

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3

Suite 320

Las Vegas, NV 89149

Counsel for Amici Curiae FPC Action Foundation and 

Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc. in Support of Appellant

Elisa A. Long

Lisa B. Freeland

Renee Pietropaolo

Eleni Kousoulis

K. Anthony Thomas

Helen A. Marino

Heidi R. Freese

Matthew Campbell

Office of Federal Public Defender

1001 Liberty Avenue

1500 Liberty Center

Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Counsel for Amicus Curiae Federal Public & 

Community Defender Organization of the Third 

Circuit in Support of Appellant

Brian M. Boynton

Jacqueline C. Romero

Mark B. Stern

Michael S. Raab

Abby C. Wright

Kevin B. Soter [Argued]

United States Department of Justice

Civil Division

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Case: 21-2835 Document: 156 Page: 3 Date Filed: 12/23/2024
4

Washington, DC 20530

Counsel for the Appellees

Janet Carter

Everytown Law

450 Lexington Avenue

P.O. Box 4148

New York, NY 10017

Counsel for Amicus Curiae Everytown for Gun Safety 

in Support of Appellees

______________

OPINION OF THE COURT

______________

HARDIMAN, Circuit Judge, filed the Opinion of the Court 

with whom CHAGARES, Chief Judge, and JORDAN, BIBAS, 

PORTER, MATEY, PHIPPS, FREEMAN, MONTGOMERYREEVES, and CHUNG, Circuit Judges, join. MATEY, 

Circuit Judge, filed a concurring opinion. PHIPPS, Circuit 

Judge, filed a concurring opinion. KRAUSE, Circuit Judge, 

filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, with whom 

ROTH, Circuit Judge, joins in part. ROTH, Circuit Judge, 

filed an opinion concurring in the judgment, with whom 

KRAUSE and CHUNG, Circuit Judges, join in part. AMBRO, 

Circuit Judge, concurs in the judgment only. SHWARTZ, 

Circuit Judge, filed a dissenting opinion with whom 

RESTREPO, Circuit Judge, joins.

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5

Bryan Range appeals the District Court’s summary 

judgment rejecting his claim that the federal “felon-inpossession” law—18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1)—violates his Second 

Amendment right to keep and bear arms. We agree with Range 

that, despite his false statement conviction, he remains among 

“the people” protected by the Second Amendment. And 

because the Government did not carry its burden of showing 

that the principles underlying our Nation’s history and tradition 

of firearm regulation support disarming Range, we will reverse

and remand.

I

A

The material facts are undisputed. In 1995, Range

pleaded guilty in the Court of Common Pleas of Lancaster 

County to one count of making a false statement to obtain food 

stamps in violation of Pennsylvania law. See 62 Pa. Stat. Ann.

§ 481(a). In those days, Range was earning between $9.00 and

$9.50 an hour as he and his wife struggled to raise three young 

children on $300 per week. Range’s wife prepared an 

application for food stamps that understated Range’s income, 

which she and Range signed. Though he did not recall 

reviewing the application, Range accepted full responsibility

for the misrepresentation.

Range was sentenced to three years’ probation, which 

he completed without incident. He also paid $2,458 in 

restitution, $288.29 in costs, and a $100 fine. Other than his 

1995 conviction, Range’s criminal history is limited to minor 

traffic and parking infractions and a summary offense for

fishing without a license.

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When Range pleaded guilty in 1995, his conviction was 

classified as a Pennsylvania misdemeanor punishable by up to 

five years’ imprisonment. That conviction precludes Range 

from possessing a firearm because federal law generally makes 

it “unlawful for any person . . . who has been convicted in any 

court, of a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term 

exceeding one year” to “possess in or affecting commerce, any 

firearm or ammunition.” 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Although state 

misdemeanors are excluded from that prohibition if they are 

“punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or less,” 

18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20)(B), that safe harbor provided no refuge 

for Range because he faced up to five years’ imprisonment.

In 1998, Range tried to buy a firearm but was rejected 

by Pennsylvania’s instant background check system. Range’s 

wife, thinking the rejection a mistake, gifted him a deerhunting rifle. Years later, Range tried to buy a firearm and was 

rejected again. After researching the reason for the denial, 

Range learned he was barred from buying a firearm because of 

his 1995 conviction. Range then sold his deer-hunting rifle to 

a firearms dealer.

B

In 2020, Range sued in the United States District Court

for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, seeking a declaration

that § 922(g)(1) violates the Second Amendment as applied to 

him. He also requested an injunction prohibiting the law’s 

enforcement against him. Range asserts that but for

§ 922(g)(1), he would “for sure” purchase another deerhunting rifle and “maybe a shotgun” for self-defense at home. 

App. 197–98. Range and the Government cross-moved for 

summary judgment.

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The District Court granted the Government’s motion. 

Range v. Lombardo, 557 F. Supp. 3d 609, 611 (E.D. Pa. 2021).

Faithfully applying our then-controlling precedents, the Court 

held that Range’s crime was “serious” enough to deprive him 

of his Second Amendment rights. Id. In doing so, the Court

noted the two-step framework we established in United States 

v. Marzzarella, 614 F.3d 85 (3d Cir. 2010). Range, 557 F. 

Supp. 3d at 613. The Court began—and ended—its analysis at 

the first step. It considered five factors to determine whether 

Range’s conviction made him an “unvirtuous citizen” of the 

kind historically barred from possessing a firearm: (1) whether 

the conviction was classified as a misdemeanor or a felony; (2) 

whether the elements of the offense involved violence; (3) the 

sentence imposed; (4) whether there was a cross-jurisdictional 

consensus as to the seriousness of the crime, Binderup v. Att’y 

Gen., 836 F.3d 336, 351–52 (3d Cir. 2016) (en banc)

(plurality); and (5) the potential for physical harm to others

created by the offense, Holloway v. Att’y Gen., 948 F.3d 164, 

173 (3d Cir. 2020). Range, 557 F. Supp. 3d at 613–14.

The Government conceded that four of the five factors 

favored Range because he was convicted of a nonviolent, nondangerous misdemeanor and had not been incarcerated. Id. at 

614. But the District Court held the “cross-jurisdictional 

consensus” factor favored the Government because about 40 

jurisdictions would have classified his crime as a felony. Id. at 

614–15. Noting that our decisions in Holloway, 948 F.3d at

177, and Folajtar v. Att’y Gen., 980 F.3d 897, 900 (3d Cir. 

2020), had rejected as-applied challenges to § 922(g)(1) 

despite only one of the relevant factors weighing in the 

Government’s favor, the District Court held that the crossjurisdictional consensus alone sufficed to disarm Range. 

Range, 557 F. Supp. 3d at 615–16. Range timely appealed.

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While Range’s appeal was pending, the Supreme Court 

decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 

U.S. 1 (2022). The parties then submitted supplemental 

briefing on Bruen’s impact. A panel of this Court affirmed the 

District Court’s summary judgment, holding that the 

Government had met its burden to show that § 922(g)(1) 

reflects the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation 

such that Range’s conviction “places him outside the class of 

people traditionally entitled to Second Amendment rights.”

Range v. Att’y Gen., 53 F.4th 262, 266 (3d Cir. 2022) (per 

curiam).

Range petitioned for rehearing en banc. We granted the 

petition and vacated the panel opinion. Range v. Att’y Gen., 56

F.4th 992 (3d Cir. 2023). The en banc Court reversed and 

remanded for the District Court to enter a declaratory judgment 

for Range. We concluded that Range remained one of “the 

people” protected by the Second Amendment and that the 

Government did not show the Nation has a longstanding 

history and tradition of disarming people like Range. Range v. 

Att’y Gen., 69 F.4th 96, 98 (3d Cir. 2023) (en banc). The 

Government petitioned the Supreme Court for a writ of 

certiorari.

While the Government’s petition was pending, the 

Supreme Court decided United States v. Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 

1889 (2024). The Court then vacated our en banc decision in 

Range and remanded for further consideration. Garland v. 

Range, 144 S. Ct. 2706 (2024). The parties and amicus filed 

more briefs and we heard argument again.

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II

The District Court had jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. 

§ 1331 because Range’s complaint raised a federal question: 

whether the federal felon-in-possession law, 18 U.S.C. 

§ 922(g)(1), violates the Second Amendment as applied to 

Range. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

III

In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court 

held that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual 

right to keep and bear arms unconnected with militia service.

554 U.S. 570, 583–84 (2008). Given that right, the Court held 

unconstitutional a District of Columbia law that banned 

handguns and required other “firearms in the home be rendered 

and kept inoperable at all times.” Id. at 630. It reached that 

conclusion after scrutinizing the text of the Second 

Amendment and deducing that it “codified a pre-existing

right.” Id. at 592. The Heller opinion did not apply 

intermediate or strict scrutiny. In fact, it did not apply meansend scrutiny at all. But in response to Justice Breyer’s dissent,

the Court noted in passing that the challenged law would be 

unconstitutional “[u]nder any of the standards of scrutiny that 

we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights.” Id. at 

628–29.

Many courts around the country, including this one, 

overread that passing comment to require a two-step approach

in Second Amendment cases, utilizing means-end scrutiny at 

the second step. We did so for the first time in Marzzarella, 

614 F.3d at 97, and we continued down that road for over a

decade. See, e.g., Drake v. Filko, 724 F.3d 426, 429, 434–40 

(3d Cir. 2013); Binderup, 836 F.3d at 344–47, 353–56; Ass’n 

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of N.J. Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Inc. v. Att’y Gen. N.J., 910 F.3d 

106, 117 (3d Cir. 2018); Beers v. Att’y Gen., 927 F.3d 150, 

154–55 (3d Cir. 2019), vacated as moot sub nom. Beers v. 

Barr, 140 S. Ct. 2758 (2020); Holloway, 948 F.3d at 169–72;

Folajtar, 980 F.3d at 901.

Bruen rejected the two-step approach as “one step too 

many.” 597 U.S. at 19. The Supreme Court declared: “Heller 

and McDonald do not support applying means-end scrutiny in 

the Second Amendment context.” Id. Instead, those cases teach

“that when the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an 

individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects 

that conduct.” Id. at 17. And “[o]nly if a firearm regulation is 

consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court 

conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second 

Amendment’s ‘unqualified command.’” Id. (quoting 

Konigsberg v. State Bar of Cal., 366 U.S. 36, 50 n.10 (1961)).

Applying that standard, Bruen held “that the Second and 

Fourteenth Amendments protect an individual’s right to carry 

a handgun for self-defense outside the home.” Id. at 10. But the 

“where” question decided in Bruen is not at issue here. Range’s 

appeal instead requires us to examine who is among “the 

people” protected by the Second Amendment. U.S. Const. 

amend. II; see Bruen, 597 U.S. at 72 (Alito, J., concurring) 

(“Our holding decides nothing about who may lawfully 

possess a firearm . . . .”); see also Eugene Volokh, 

Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms for SelfDefense: An Analytical Framework and a Research Agenda, 

56 UCLA L. Rev. 1443 (2009) (distinguishing among “who,”

“what,” “where,” “when,” and “how” restrictions). Range 

claims he is one of “the people” entitled to keep and bear arms

and that our Nation has no historical tradition of disarming 

people like him. The Government responds that Range has not 

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been one of “the people” since 1995, when he pleaded guilty 

in Pennsylvania state court to making a false statement on his 

food stamp application, and that his disarmament is historically 

supported.

IV

Having explained how Bruen abrogated our Second 

Amendment jurisprudence, we now apply the Supreme Court’s 

established method to the facts of Range’s case. Both sides

agree that we no longer conduct means-end scrutiny. And as 

the panel wrote: “Bruen’s focus on history and tradition,” 

means that “Binderup’s multifactored seriousness inquiry no 

longer applies.” Range, 53 F.4th at 270 n.9.

After Bruen, we must first decide whether the text of the

Second Amendment applies to a person and his proposed 

conduct. 597 U.S. at 31–33. If it does, the government now 

bears the burden of proof: it “must affirmatively prove that its 

firearms regulation is part of the historical tradition that 

delimits the outer bounds of the right to keep and bear arms.” 

Id. at 19.

A

We begin with the threshold question: whether Range is 

one of “the people” who have Second Amendment rights. The 

Government contends that the Second Amendment does not 

apply to Range at all because “[t]he right to bear arms has 

historically extended to the political community of lawabiding, responsible citizens.” Gov’t En Banc Br. at 2. So 

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Range’s 1995 conviction, the Government insists, removed 

him from “the people” protected by the Second Amendment.

The Supreme Court referred to “law-abiding citizens” 

in Heller. In response to Justice Stevens’s dissent, which relied 

on United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939), the Court 

reasoned that “the Second Amendment does not protect those 

weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for 

lawful purposes.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 625. In isolation, this 

language seems to support the Government’s argument. But 

Heller said more; it explained that “the people” as used 

throughout the Constitution “unambiguously refers to all 

members of the political community, not an unspecified 

subset.” Id. at 580. So the Second Amendment right, Heller 

said, presumptively “belongs to all Americans.” Id. at 581.

Range cites these statements to argue that “law-abiding 

citizens” should not be read “as rejecting Heller’s 

interpretation of ‘the people.’” Range Pet. for Reh’g at 8. We 

agree with Range for four reasons.

First, the criminal histories of the plaintiffs in Heller, 

McDonald, and Bruen were not at issue in those cases. So their 

references to “law-abiding, responsible citizens” were dicta. 

And while we heed that phrase, we are careful not to overread 

it as we and other circuit courts did with Heller’s statement that 

the District of Columbia firearm law would fail under any form 

of heightened scrutiny.

Second, other constitutional provisions refer to “the 

people.”1 For instance, “the people” are recognized as having 

1 See, e.g., U.S. Const. pmbl. (“We the People of the United 

States . . . .” (emphasis added)); id. amend. IX (recognizing 

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rights to assemble peaceably, to petition the government for 

redress,2and to be protected against unreasonable searches and 

seizures.3 Felons are not categorically barred from First 

Amendment or Fourth Amendment protection because of their 

status. It is true, however, that prisoners have no First 

Amendment right to peaceably assemble, see Pell v. Procunier, 

417 U.S. 817, 822 (1974), and no Fourth Amendment right as 

to prison-cell searches. Hudson v. Palmer, 468 U.S. 517, 526 

(1984). We see no reason to adopt a reading of “the people”

that excludes Americans from the scope of the Second 

Amendment while they retain their constitutional rights in 

other contexts.

Third, as the plurality stated in Binderup: “That 

individuals with Second Amendment rights may nonetheless 

be denied possession of a firearm is hardly illogical.” 836 F.3d 

at 344 (Ambro, J.). That statement tracks then-Judge Barrett’s 

dissenting opinion in Kanter v. Barr, in which she persuasively 

explained that “all people have the right to keep and bear 

arms,” though the legislature may constitutionally “strip 

certain groups of that right.” 919 F.3d 437, 452 (7th Cir. 2019). 

rights “retained by the people”); id. amend. X (acknowledging 

the powers reserved “to the people”).

2 U.S. Const. amend. I (“Congress shall make no law 

respecting . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, 

and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 

(emphasis added)).

3 U.S. Const. amend. IV (“The right of the people to be secure 

in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against 

unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . .” 

(emphasis added)).

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We agree with that statement in Binderup and then-Judge 

Barrett’s reasoning.

Fourth, as the Government concedes, see Gov’t Range 

II En Banc Br. 25, Rahimi makes clear that citizens are not 

excluded from Second Amendment protections just because

they are not “responsible.” See Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1903. The 

Supreme Court cautioned that “responsible” is too vague a 

concept to dictate the Second Amendment’s applicability and 

using the term that way would create an “unclear . . . rule” that 

does not “derive from [Supreme Court] case law.” Id. So too 

with the phrase “law-abiding.” Does it exclude those who have 

committed summary offenses or petty misdemeanors, which 

typically result in a ticket and a small fine? No. We are 

confident that the Supreme Court’s references to “law-abiding, 

responsible citizens” do not mean that every American who 

gets a traffic ticket is no longer among “the people” protected 

by the Second Amendment. Perhaps, then, the category refers 

only to those who commit “real crimes” like felonies or felonyequivalents? At English common law, felonies were so serious 

they were punishable by estate forfeiture and even death. 4 

William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 54 

(1769). But at the Founding, many states were moving away 

from making felonies—including crimes akin to making false 

statements—punishable by death in America. See United 

States v. Moore, 111 F.4th 266, 270–72 (3d Cir. 2024) (citing 

various Founding-era felony laws and penalties). For example, 

in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Kentucky, Virginia, 

Connecticut, and New York, forgery and counterfeiting were 

punishable with imprisonment, hard labor, fines, or corporal 

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punishment, but not death.4 Federally, the Crimes Act of 1790

criminalized conduct involving falsification of records and

stealing property of the United States, and punished such 

conduct with fines, corporal punishment, or a term of 

imprisonment.5 And today, felonies include a wide swath of 

crimes, some of which seem minor.

6 Meanwhile, some 

4

James T. Mitchell et al., Compiled Statutes at Large of 

Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801 (1700-1809); An Act to 

Prevent Forgery, And For the Punishment of Those Who Are 

Guilty of the Same. 1784 Mass. Acts Ch. 67; Virginia, 

Collection of All Such Acts of the General Assembly of 

Virginia, of a Public or Permanent Nature, as are Now in Force 

(1803); Harry Toulmin, Collection of All the Public and 

Permanent Acts of the General Assembly of Kentucky Which 

Are Now in Force (1802); Acts and Laws of the State of 

Connecticut (1784); William Paterson, Laws of the State of 

New Jersey (1800); Thomas Greenleaf, Laws of the State of 

New York, Comprising the Constitution, and the Acts of the 

Legislature, since the Revolution, from the First to the 

Fifteenth Session (1797).

5 See Crimes Act of 1790, §§ 14–15, 1 Stat. 122, 115–16.

6 See, e.g., 18 U.S.C. § 1464 (uttering “any obscene, indecent, 

or profane language by means of radio communication”); 

Mich. Comp. Laws Ann. § 445.574a(2)(d) (returning out-ofstate bottles or cans); 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 3929.1 (third 

offense of library theft of more than $150); id. § 7613 (reading 

another’s email without permission).

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misdemeanors seem serious.7 As the Supreme Court noted 

recently: “a felon is not always more dangerous than a 

misdemeanant.” Lange v. California, 594 U.S. 295, 305 (2021)

(cleaned up).

At root, the Government’s claim that “felons are not 

among ‘the people’ protected by the Second Amendment,” see 

Gov’t Range II En Banc Br. 9 n.1, devolves authority to

legislators to decide whom to exclude from “the people.” We 

reject that approach because such “extreme deference gives 

legislatures unreviewable power to manipulate the Second 

Amendment by choosing a label.” Folajtar, 980 F.3d at 912 

(Bibas, J., dissenting). And that deference would contravene

Heller’s reasoning that “the enshrinement of constitutional 

rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table.”

554 U.S. at 636; see also Bruen, 597 U.S. at 26 (warning 

against “judicial deference to legislative interest balancing”).

In sum, we reject the Government’s contention that 

“felons are not among ‘the people’ protected by the Second 

Amendment.” Heller and its progeny lead us to conclude that 

Bryan Range remains among “the people” despite his 1995 

false statement conviction.

Having determined that Range is one of “the people,”

we turn to the easy question: whether § 922(g)(1) regulates

Second Amendment conduct. It does. Range’s request—to 

possess a rifle to hunt and a shotgun to defend himself at 

home—tracks the constitutional right as defined by Heller. 554 

7 See, e.g., 18 Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. § 2504 (involuntary 

manslaughter); id. § 2707 (propulsion of missiles into an 

occupied vehicle or onto a roadway); 11 Del. Code § 881 

(bribery).

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U.S. at 582 (“[T]he Second Amendment extends, prima facie, 

to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that 

were not in existence at the time of the founding.”). So “the 

Second Amendment’s plain text covers [Range’s] conduct,” 

and “the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.”

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 17.

B

Because Range and his proposed conduct are protected 

by the Second Amendment, we now ask whether the

Government can strip him of his right to keep and bear arms. 

To answer that question, we must determine whether the 

Government has shown that applying § 922(g)(1) to Range

would be “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of 

firearm regulation.” Id. at 24. We hold that the Government has 

not carried its burden.

To preclude Range from possessing firearms, the 

Government must show that § 922(g)(1), as applied to him, “is 

part of the historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of 

the right to keep and bear arms.” Id. at 19. Historical tradition 

can be established by analogical reasoning, which “requires 

only that the government identify a well-established and 

representative historical analogue, not a historical twin.” Id. at 

30. To be compatible with the Second Amendment, modern 

laws must be “‘relevantly similar’ to laws that our tradition is 

understood to permit.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 (quoting 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29). “Why and how the regulation burdens 

the right are central to this inquiry.” Id. 

In attempting to carry its burden, the Government relies 

on the Supreme Court’s statement in Heller that “nothing in 

our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding 

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prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons.” 554 U.S.

at 626. A plurality of the Court reiterated that point in 

McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 786 (2010). In his 

concurring opinion in Bruen, Justice Kavanaugh, joined by the 

Chief Justice, wrote that felon-in-possession prohibitions are 

“presumptively lawful” under Heller and McDonald. 597 U.S.

at 81 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27 & n.26).8

Section 922(g)(1) is a straightforward “prohibition[ ] on 

the possession of firearms by felons.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 626. 

And since 1961 “federal law has generally prohibited 

individuals convicted of crimes punishable by more than one 

year of imprisonment from possessing firearms.” Gov’t En 

Banc Br. at 1; see An Act To Strengthen The Federal Firearms 

Act, Pub. L. No. 87-342, 75 Stat. 757 (1961). But the earliest 

version of that statute, the Federal Firearms Act of 1938,

applied only to violent criminals. Pub. L. No. 75-785, §§ 1(6), 

2(f), 52 Stat. 1250, 1250–51 (1938). As the First Circuit 

explained: “the current federal felony firearm ban differs 

considerably from the [original] version . . . . [T]he law 

initially covered those convicted of a limited set of violent 

crimes such as murder, rape, kidnapping, and burglary, but 

extended to both felons and misdemeanants convicted of 

qualifying offenses.” United States v. Booker, 644 F.3d 12, 24 

(1st Cir. 2011); see also United States v. Skoien, 614 F.3d 638, 

640 (7th Cir. 2010) (en banc).

Even if the 1938 Act were “longstanding” enough to 

warrant Heller’s assurance—a dubious proposition given the

8 The Heller, McDonald, and Bruen Courts cited no such 

“longstanding prohibitions,” presumably because they did “not 

undertake an exhaustive historical analysis . . . of the full scope 

of the Second Amendment.” Heller, 554 U.S. at 626.

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Rahimi Court’s focus on Founding-era sources, 144 S. Ct. at 

1899–900, and the Bruen Court’s emphasis on Founding- and 

Reconstruction-era sources, 597 U.S. at 34, 59–60—Range 

would not have been a prohibited person under that law.

Whatever timeframe the Supreme Court might establish in a 

future case,see Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 n.1, we are confident

that a law passed in 1961—some 170 years after the Second 

Amendment’s ratification and nearly a century after the 

Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification—falls well short of 

“longstanding” for purposes of demarcating the scope of a 

constitutional right. So the 1961 iteration of § 922(g)(1) does 

not satisfy the Government’s burden.9

The Government’s attempt to identify older historical 

analogues also fails. The Government argues that “legislatures 

traditionally used status-based restrictions” to disarm certain 

groups of people. Gov’t En Banc Br. at 4 (quoting Range, 53 

F.4th at 282). Apart from the fact that those restrictions based 

9 Nor are we convinced by the 1920s and 1930s state statutes 

banning firearm possession by felons, or the 1960s laws 

disarming drug addicts and drug users, 1980s laws disarming 

persons unlawfully present in the United States and persons 

dishonorably discharged from the armed forces, or 1990s laws 

disarming domestic violence misdemeanants. Gov’t Range II 

En Banc Br. 17, 20–21. These are all too late: “20th-century 

evidence . . . does not provide insight into the meaning of the 

Second Amendment when it contradicts earlier evidence.” 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 66 n.28; Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1924 (Barrett, 

J. concurring) (“[T]he history that matters most is the history 

surrounding the ratification of the text; that backdrop 

illuminates the meaning of the enacted law. History (or 

tradition) that long postdates ratification does not serve that 

function.”).

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20

on race and religion now would be unconstitutional under the 

First and Fourteenth Amendments, the Government does not 

successfully analogize those groups to Range. That Foundingera governments disarmed groups they distrusted like

Loyalists, Native Americans, Quakers, Catholics, and Blacks 

does nothing to prove that Range is part of a similar group 

today. And any such analogy would be “far too broad[ ].” See 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 31 (noting that historical restrictions on 

firearms in “sensitive places” do not empower legislatures to 

designate any place “sensitive” and then ban firearms there).

For instance, as the Government notes, colonial laws disarmed 

Loyalists for helping the British army or “bearing arms 

against” the Continental Congress. Gov’t Range II En Banc Br. 

13 (quoting Resolution of Mar. 13, 1776, in Journal of the 

Provincial Congress of South Carolina, 1776, at 77 (1776)).

The colonies reasonably feared that Loyalists might take up 

arms again. But there is no such basis to fear that Range is 

disloyal to his country.

According to the Government, taken together, these 

proposed historical analogues support a principle that 

“American legislatures disarmed classes of individuals who 

posed a danger of misusing firearms.” Gov’t Range II En Banc 

Br. 19.

Rahimi did bless disarming (at least temporarily)

physically dangerous people. The law that it upheld required 

“a finding that [the defendant] represents a credible threat to 

[someone else’s] physical safety.” 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8)(C)(i); 

144 S. Ct. at 1894, 1896, 1898, 1901–02. It did so “because the 

Government offer[ed] ample evidence” of a tradition of 

disarming people who “pose[ ] a clear threat of physical 

violence to another.” Id. at 1898, 1901; accord id. at 1898 

(“credible threat to the physical safety of others”). But the

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Government does not try to justify disarming Range on this 

ground, and with good reason: it has no evidence that he poses 

a physical danger to others or that food-stamp fraud is closely 

associated with physical danger. It conceded as much the first 

time this Court heard the case en banc. Oral argument at 35:05–

34:10; 32:55–31:52; 28:45–28:10.

Rather, the Government seeks to stretch dangerousness 

to cover all felonies and even misdemeanors that federal law 

equates with felonies. It notes that Rahimi left open the 

possibility of “banning the possession of guns by categories of 

persons thought by a legislature to present a special danger of 

misuse.” Gov’t Range II En Banc Br. 19 (quoting 144 S. Ct. at 

1901). And it argues that those “convicted of serious crimes, 

as a class, can be expected to misuse firearms.” Id. at 22 

(internal quotation marks omitted); accord United States v. 

Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120, 1127–29 (8th Cir. 2024).

Even if that categorical argument could suffice to 

uphold the original 1938 felon-in-possession ban, it does not 

support the current one. Again, it is “far too broad[ ].” Bruen, 

597 U.S. at 31. It operates “at such a high level of generality 

that it waters down the right.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1926 

(Barrett, J., concurring). Like the Sixth Circuit, we refuse to 

defer blindly to § 922(g)(1) in its present form. See United 

States v. Williams, 113 F.4th 637, 658–61 (6th Cir. 2024)

(categorizing crimes as crimes against the person, crimes like 

burglary and drug trafficking that “pose a significant threat of 

danger,” and nondangerous ones).

To support the de facto permanent disarmament that 

§ 922(g)(1) imposes, the Government points out that “the 

Founding generation determined that many criminal offenses 

were of such ‘gravity’ that they should ‘expose offenders to the 

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22

harshest of punishments, including death.’” Gov’t Range II En 

Banc Br. 10 (citation omitted). Our dissenting colleagues 

likewise reason “that fraudsters could lose their life, and hence 

their firearms rights.” Dissent of Shwartz, J., at 5. It is true that

“founding-era practice” was to punish some “felony offenses 

with death.” Gov’t Range II En Banc Br. 10. For example, the 

First Congress made forging or counterfeiting a public security 

a capital offense. See An Act for the Punishment of Certain 

Crimes Against the United States, 1 Stat. 112, 115 (1790). That 

said, the crime to which Range pleaded guilty—making a false 

statement to obtain food stamps—may be more analogous to 

other offense defined in the same law punishable by a term of 

imprisonment or fine.

10 While some states at first punished

nonviolent crimes “such as forgery and horse theft” with 

death, see Folajtar, 980 F.3d at 904 (citations omitted), by the

early Republic, many states assigned lesser punishments.

11

Yet the Founding-era practice of punishing some 

nonviolent crimes with death does not suggest that the 

particular (and distinct) punishment at issue here—de facto 

lifetime disarmament for all felonies and felony-equivalent 

misdemeanors—is rooted in our Nation’s history and tradition.

10 See e.g., Crimes Act of 1790, § 15, 1 Stat. 122, 115–16 (“any 

person [who] shall feloniously . . . alter [or] falsify . . . any 

record . . . in any of the courts of the United States, by means

whereof any judgment shall be reversed” is punishable by fine, 

whipping, or “imprison[ment] not exceeding seven years”); id. 

§ 16 (“any person . . . [in] custody . . . of any victuals provided 

for the victualing of any soldiers . . . [who] for any lucre or 

gain, . . . embezzle, purloin or convey away [such goods]” is 

punishable by fine or public whipping).

11 See supra note 4.

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Though our dissenting colleagues read Rahimi as blessing 

disarmament as a lesser punishment generally, the Court did 

not do that. Instead, it authorized temporary disarmament as a 

sufficient analogue to historic temporary imprisonment only to 

“respond to the use of guns to threaten the physical safety of 

others.” Compare Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1902, with United 

States v. Diaz, 116 F.4th 458, 469–70 (5th Cir. 2024) (similarly 

broad reasoning).

For similar reasons, Founding-era laws that forfeited 

felons’ weapons or estates are not sufficient analogues either.

Such laws often prescribed the forfeiture of the specific 

weapon used to commit a firearms-related offense without 

affecting the perpetrator’s right to keep and bear arms 

generally. See, e.g., Act of Dec. 21, 1771, ch. 540, N.J. Laws 

343–344 (“An Act for the Preservation of Deer, and other 

Game, and to prevent trespassing with Guns”); Act of Apr. 20, 

1745, ch. 3, N.C. Laws 69–70 (“An Act to prevent killing deer 

at unseasonable times, and for putting a stop to many abuses 

committed by white persons, under pretence of hunting”). So 

in the Founding era, a felon could acquire arms after 

completing his sentence and reintegrating into society. 

Against this backdrop, it’s important to remember that 

Range’s crime—making a false statement on an application for 

food stamps—did not involve a firearm, so there was no 

criminal instrument to forfeit. And even if there were, 

government confiscation of the instruments of crime (or a 

convicted criminal’s entire estate) differs from a status-based 

lifetime ban on firearm possession. The Government has not 

cited a single statute or case that precludes a convict who has 

served his sentence from purchasing the same type of object 

that he used to commit a crime. Nor has the Government cited 

forfeiture cases in which the convict was prevented from 

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regaining his possessions, including firearms (unless forfeiture 

preceded execution). That’s true whether the object forfeited to 

the government was a firearm used to hunt out of season, a car 

used to transport cocaine, or a mobile home used as a 

methamphetamine lab. And of those three, only firearms are 

mentioned in the Bill of Rights.12

For the reasons stated, we hold that the Government has 

not shown that the principles underlying the Nation’s historical 

tradition of firearms regulation support depriving Range of his

Second Amendment right to possess a firearm.

13 See Rahimi, 

144 S. Ct. at 1898; Bruen, 597 U.S. at 17.

* * *

Our decision today is a narrow one. Bryan Range 

challenged the constitutionality of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) only 

12 Even arms used to commit crimes bordering on treason were 

sometimes returned to the perpetrators during the Founding 

era. After the Massachusetts militia quelled Shays’s Rebellion 

in 1787, the state required the rebels and those who supported 

them to “deliver up their arms.” 1 Private and Special Statutes 

of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts from 1780–1805, 

145–47 (1805). But those arms were to be returned after three 

years upon satisfaction of certain conditions. Id. at 146–47.

13 Our concurring colleague criticizes that our opinion “creates 

more questions than it answers” and that we “decline to adopt 

any articulable methodology of [our] own.” Concurrence of 

Krause, J., 67, 65. But in this as-applied constitutional 

challenge, our task is to decide only Mr. Range’s case, rather 

than preview how this Court would decide future Second 

Amendment challenges.

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as applied to him given his violation of 62 Pa. Stat. Ann. 

§ 481(a). Range remains one of “the people” protected by the 

Second Amendment, and his eligibility to lawfully purchase a 

rifle and a shotgun is protected by his right to keep and bear 

arms. More than two decades after he was convicted of foodstamp fraud and completed his sentence, he sought protection 

from prosecution under § 922(g)(1) for any future possession 

of a firearm. The record contains no evidence that Range poses 

a physical danger to others. Because the Government has not 

shown that our Republic has a longstanding history and 

tradition of depriving people like Range of their firearms, 

§ 922(g)(1) cannot constitutionally strip him of his Second 

Amendment rights. We will reverse the judgment of the 

District Court and remand so the Court can enter a declaratory 

judgment for Range, enjoin enforcement of § 922(g)(1) against 

him, and conduct any further proceedings consistent with this 

opinion.

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1

MATEY, Circuit Judge, concurring.

Having “arms for [one’s] defence . . . is indeed a public 

allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of 

resistance and self-preservation.” 1 William Blackstone, 

Commentaries *143–44. I agree with the majority that the 

Justice Department has not shown that § 922(g)(1) can be 

applied to disarm Bryan Range. I write separately to explain 

why that conclusion follows classical principles respecting the 

natural rights that inform “our regulatory tradition.” United 

States v. Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 1889, 1898 (2024). Doing so 

demonstrates the “reason and spirit” of the law, 1 Blackstone, 

Commentaries *61, or the “principles underlying the Second 

Amendment,” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898. Although historical 

practices need not be a “dead ringer” or a “historical twin,” 

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 (quoting N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol 

Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 30 (2022)), they must always 

faithfully follow the “the first and primary end of human laws, 

[which] is to maintain and regulate [the] absolute rights of 

individuals,” Alexander Hamilton, The Farmer Refuted

(1775), reprinted in The Revolutionary Writings of Alexander 

Hamilton 53 (Richard B. Vernier ed., 2008) (emphasis 

omitted) (quoting 1 Blackstone, Commentaries *124). That is 

the tradition informing our historical practice, and the principle 

that necessarily guides our analysis. 

I.

Preserving “unalienable rights” justified our separation 

from England, Declaration of Independence para. 2 (U.S. 

1776), and required a government “ordain[ed]” to “promote the 

general Welfare” and “secure the Blessings of Liberty,” U.S. 

Const., pmbl. That is because “natural liberty is a gift of the 

beneficent Creator,” while “[c]ivil liberty is only natural 

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2

liberty, modified and secured by the sanctions of civil society.”

Hamilton, supra, at 70 (emphasis omitted); see also Collected 

Works of James Wilson 1083 (Kermit L. Hall & Mark David 

Hall eds., 2007) (“[M]an does not exist for the sake of 

government, but government instituted for the sake of man.”).

But the fundamental rights that predate America are not 

unlimited, and like any law, never license acting contrary to the 

common good.

1 These inherent limitations apply to all of 

man’s “natural rights,” and are consistent with the Supreme 

Court’s repeated explanation that the “pre-existing” 

“individual right to keep and bear arms” for self-defense is “not 

unlimited.” District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 592, 

595 (2008) (emphasis omitted); see also Bruen, 597 U.S. at 20;

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1897.2

1 See Collected Works of James Wilson 1055–56. 

(“[S]elfishness and injury are as little countenanced by the law 

of nature as by the law of man.”); Thomas Aquinas, Summa 

Theologica, pt. I-II, q. 90, art. 2 (Fathers of the English 

Dominican Province trans., Benzinger Bros. 1947) (c. 1271)

(“Consequently, since the law is chiefly ordained to the 

common good, any other precept in regard to some individual 

work, must needs be devoid of the nature of a law, save in so 

far as it regards the common good. Therefore every law is 

ordained to the common good.”).

2 See Collected Works of James Wilson at 1056. (“Upon 

the whole, therefore, man’s natural liberty, instead of being 

abridged, may be increased and secured in a government, 

which is good and wise. As it is with regard to his natural 

liberty, so it is with regard to his other natural rights.”); The 

Unsigned Essays of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Early 

American Views of Law 262 (Valerie L. Horowitz ed., 2015) 

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Surveying history helps us understand the reasons relied 

on to regulate the right, see Bruen, 597 U.S. at 27–29; Rahimi, 

144 S. Ct. at 1898, ensuring a “[c]ontinuity of [p]rinciples” 

faithful to our inherited tradition.3 We look, in other words, for 

“markers or indicators that the later doctrine is essentially 

continuous with the earlier one and grows out of it, rather than 

representing a break with the past that mutilates or 

fundamentally transforms the core and essence of the 

doctrine.” Adrian Vermeule, Common Good Constitutionalism

123 (2022). So we must consider the sources that animate the 

(“[U]nder certain circumstances, life, and liberty, and property, 

may justly be taken away; as, for instance, in order to prevent 

crimes, to enforce the rights of other persons, or to secure the 

safety and happiness of society.”).

3

John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development 

of Christian Doctrine 178 (Longmans, Green, & Co. 1909)

(1845); see also id. at 178–79 (“[P]rinciples are permanent,” 

so “[d]octrines stand to principles, as the definitions to the 

axioms and postulates of mathematics.”); Jamie G. 

McWilliam, A Classical Legal Interpretation of the Second 

Amendment, 28 Tex. Rev. L. & Pol. 125, 159 (2024) (“Even 

when circumstances evolve, the principles remain the same” so 

any “statutes governing arms for the common good must be 

evaluated for their compliance with the principles of the ius 

naturale and the determinations thereof embodied in the 

Second Amendment.”); Bank of Toledo v. City of Toledo, 1 

Ohio St. 622, 630–31 (1853) (“[L]aw is the perfection of 

reason, and that it is the reason and justice of a legal principle, 

which give to its vitality,” therefore, “recurrence should be had 

to fundamental principles, and the authority of precedent 

regarded so far only as there is to be found a conformity to 

reason and the true nature of our own government.”).

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natural right to bear arms, and the origin of the tradition that 

inspired that right, since “the object” of declaring our 

independence was “not to find out new principles, or new 

arguments, never before thought of, [or] merely to say things 

which had never been said before.” Letter from Thomas 

Jefferson to Henry Lee (May 8, 1825). Instead, we sought to 

“place before mankind the common sense of the 

subject . . . giv[ing] to that expression the proper tone and spirit 

called for by the occasion. [A]ll [its] authority rests then on the 

harmonising sentiments of the day, whether expressed, in 

conversns in letters, printed essays or in the elementary books 

of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney Etc.” Id.4

4

I follow the well-established practice of consulting 

classical authorities discussing natural law to inform the 

determination of written rights. “[S]eventeenth- and 

eighteenth-century jurists such as Hugo Grotius, Samuel 

Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, and William Blackstone” all 

held a “jurisprudential worldview” that reflects an “interpretive 

tradition” of viewing “natural law not simply as a collection of 

universally valid substantive moral principles grounded in 

human nature, but also as an interpretive approach.” Robert 

Lowry Clinton, The Supreme Court Before John Marshall, 27 

J. Sup. Ct. Hist. 222, 227 (2002). The theory that “the 

substance of the law pre-exists its ‘declaration’ by courts or 

other authoritative interpreters” “formed the horizon within 

which the pre-Marshall and Marshall Courts understood the 

judicial function and its limitations.” Id. Examples from the 

early years following the Founding abound. See, e.g., United 

States v. The La Jeune Eugenie, 26 F. Cas. 832, 846 (Story, 

Circuit Justice, C.C.D. Mass. 1822) (No. 15,551) (“[E]very 

doctrine, that may be fairly deduced by correct reasoning from 

the rights and duties of nations, and the nature of moral 

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5

obligation, may theoretically be said to exist in the law of 

nations . . . . And I may go farther and say, that no practice 

whatsoever can obliterate the fundamental distinction between 

right and wrong, and that every nation is at liberty to apply to 

another the correct principle, whenever both nations by their 

public acts recede from such practice, and admits the injustice 

or cruelty of it.”); United States v. Libellants & Claimants of 

The Schooner Amistad (The Amistad), 40 U.S. (15 Pet.) 518, 

595 (1841) (relying on the “enteral principles of justice and 

international law”); Coffin v. United States, 156 U.S. 432, 

453–57 (1895) (tracing the “principle that there is a 

presumption of innocence in favor of the accused” back to the 

Roman law). That practice continued into the Twentieth 

Century. See, e.g., Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45, 65–67 

(1905) (Harlan, J., dissenting) (explaining that although the 

“inherent rights” to “‘be free in the enjoyment of all his 

faculties, to be free to use them in all lawful ways, to live and 

work where he will, to earn his livelihood by any lawful 

calling, [and] to pursue any livelihood or avocation’” are free 

from “undu[e] interference,” the government may exercise its 

“police power” to “promote the general welfare, or to guard the 

public health, the public morals, or the public safety” (quoting 

Allgeyer v. Lousiana, 165 U.S. 578, 589 (1897))); Pierce v. 

Soc’y of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus & Mary, 268 

U.S. 510, 535 (1925) (“The fundamental theory of liberty upon 

which all governments in this Union repose excludes any 

general power of the state to standardize its children by forcing 

them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child 

is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and 

direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to 

recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”); Berea

Coll. v. Kentucky, 211 U.S. 45, 67–68 (1908) (Harlan, J., 

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Absent exploration of the natural principles that support our 

legal tradition, we overlook those “certain primary truths, or 

first principles, upon which all subsequent reasonings must 

depend.” The Federalist No. 31, at 193 (Alexander Hamilton)

(C. Rossiter ed., 1961). In other words, an appropriate 

historical inquiry cannot be conducted while blind to the 

“reason and spirit” of the law, 1 Blackstone, Commentaries 

*61, which provided for its validity and natural purpose.5

Rightly framed, history reveals two principles 

informing a consistent tradition. First, because the right to 

self-defense is protected by the Second Amendment and 

preexists our Founding, laws extensively regulating the types 

of firearms a person can possess and the places where 

possession is permitted can “eviscerate the general right to 

publicly carry arms for self-defense.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 31; 

dissenting) (“The capacity to impart instruction to others is 

given by the Almighty for beneficent purposes; and its use may 

not be forbidden or interfered with by government,—certainly 

not, unless such instruction is, in its nature, harmful to the 

public morals or imperils the public safety. . . . The denial of 

either right would be an infringement of the liberty inherent in 

the freedom secured by the fundamental law.”); Farrington v. 

Tokushige, 273 U.S. 284, 299 (1927) (explaining that despite 

“grave problems” incident to changing social conditions, the 

government cannot infringe on the “fundamental rights of the 

individual” that the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted to 

protect).

5

“The Founders saw nothing particularly strange, or 

insuperable, in the task of appealing to those laws of 

reason . . . .” Hadley Arkes, Constitutional Illusions and 

Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of Natural Law 25 (2010).

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7

see also Heller, 554 U.S. at 636. All showing a robust 

protection of the right to bear arms by those within the civil 

society that can rarely be circumvented by the sovereign.

Second, because “public Virtue is the only Foundation 

of Republics,”6the natural right to self-defense, like all other 

natural rights, can be exercised only by “a virtuous people who 

were controlled from within by a moral compass” that 

“respect[] social order, legitimate authority,” and “civic 

virtue.”7 This principle provides the reason for restrictions of 

the right to bear arms on those who set themselves against civil 

6 Letter from John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren (Apr. 

16, 1776); see also Washington’s Farewell Address (Sept. 17, 

1796), in 1 A Compilation of Messages and Papers of the 

President, 1789–1897, 213, 220 (James D. Richardson ed., 

1896) (“It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is 

necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed 

extends with more or less force to every species of free 

government.”); Letter from John Adams to Zabdiel Adams 

(June 21, 1776) (“[I]t is Religion and Morality alone, which 

can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely 

stand . . . . The only foundation of a free Constitution, is pure 

Virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People, in a 

greater Measure, than they have it now, They may change their 

Rulers, and the forms of Government, but they will not obtain 

a lasting Liberty.—They will only exchange Tyrants and 

Tyrannies.”).

7 Daniel L. Dreisbach, Reading the Bible with the 

Founding Fathers 68 (2017); see also John Adams to the 

Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia 

of Massachusetts (Oct. 11, 1798) (“Our Constitution was made 

only for a moral and religious people.”).

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society by individual actions inconsistent with the common 

good.8 See Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1901 (“[C]ommon sense 

suggests [that] [w]hen an individual poses a clear threat of 

physical violence to another, the threatening individual may be 

disarmed.”); 1 Blackstone, Commentaries *251 (“For civil 

liberty, rightly understood, consists in protecting the rights of 

individuals by the united force of society; society cannot be 

maintained, and of course can exert no protection, without 

obedience to some sovereign power; and obedience is an empty 

name, if every individual has a right to decide how far he 

himself shall obey.”). Regulations concerning what types of 

firearms a person may carry and where a person may carry 

uniformly apply to everyone. But regulations on who may 

carry center on remedying, through punishment, present threats 

to the community stemming from individualized conduct. And 

rightfully so, because “[t]he object of human punishment” 

includes “depriving the offender of the power of doing 

mischief” in order to “secure the safety of the community.” The 

Unsigned Essays of Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story: Early 

American Views of Law 98 (Valerie L. Horowitz ed., 2015) 

[hereinafter Essays of Justice Story]. Because it is “the right of 

every society to protect its own peace and interests,” necessary 

measures may be implemented as “punishment, if the safety of 

society requires it.” Id.; see also Thomas Aquinas, Summa 

8 This principle is not synonymous with the Justice 

Department’s erroneous argument that the Second Amendment 

can be exercised only by law-abiding and responsible citizens, 

which the Supreme Court rejected in Rahimi. See 144 S. Ct. at 

1903 (rejecting “responsible” as too vague a term). As 

explained, “responsible” is not defined by the whim of the 

sovereign or the will of the majority, but instead flows from the 

classical concept of the common good.

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9

Theologica, pt. I-II, q. 96, art. 2 (Fathers of the English 

Dominican Province trans., Benzinger Bros. 1947) (“[H]uman 

laws do not forbid all vices, from which the virtuous abstain, 

but only the more grievous vices, from which it is possible for 

the majority to abstain; and chiefly those that are to the hurt of 

others, without the prohibition of which human society could 

not be maintained.”).9

A.

I begin with a brief examination of the liberty to defend 

oneself with arms, a right inherent in natural society that “[t]he 

law very wisely, and in a manner silently, gives a man.” 

Marcus Tullius Cicero, Speech in Defence of Titus Annius Milo

(c. 52 B.C.), in 3 Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero 390, 394 

(C.D. Yonge trans., 1913). Cicero explained that “if our life be 

in danger from plots, or from open violence, or from the 

weapons of robbers or enemies, every means of securing our 

9 Underexplored in this debate is the role of punishment 

in “depriving the offender of the power of doing mischief” in 

order to “secure the safety of society.” Essays of Justice Story, 

supra, at 98. Moving forward, litigants and scholars alike 

should consider the role of government in punishing

individuals who have exhibited dangerous conduct setting 

themselves against the general welfare of the community. See

Summa Theologica, supra, pt. I-II, q. 87, art. I (“It has passed 

from natural things to human affairs that whenever one thing 

rises up against another, it suffers some detriment 

therefrom. . . . Consequently, whatever rises up against order, 

is put down by that order or by the principle thereof.”); John 

Locke, Second Treatise of Government, §§ 87–88 (1690); 

Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, pt. II, § 2, ch. 1 

(1759).

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safety is honorable.” Id. This law of self-defense “is a 

law . . . not written, but born with us, —which we have not 

learnt, or received by tradition, or read, but which we have 

taken and sucked in and imbibed from nature herself; a law 

which we were not taught, but to which we were made.” Id.

The Roman empire echoed Cicero’s points “for 

centuries to come.” Stephen P. Halbrook, That Every Man Be 

Armed 20 (1984). The Lex Cornelia de sicariis of 81 B.C.

stated that carrying weapons was lawful but not carrying a 

“sword of vengeance” or “weapons for the purpose of 

homicide.” J. Inst. 4.18.5 (J. Moyle trans. 1913). Accordingly,

“whatever a person does for his bodily security he can be held 

to have done rightfully.” Dig. 1.1.3 (Florentinus, Institutes 1) 

(Alan Watson, trans., 1998). But “rightfully” is the condition 

that justifies the action. Dig. 1.1.1 (Ulpian, Institutes 1). “The 

basic principles of right are: to live honorably, not to harm any 

other person, [and] to render to each his own.” Dig. 1.1.10

(Ulpian, Rules 1) (emphasis added). Thus, “it is a grave wrong 

for one human being to encompass the life of another.” Dig. 

1.1.3 (Florentinus, Institutes 1).

Centuries later, Thomas Aquinas likewise taught that 

the “act [of killing another in self-defense], since one’s 

intention is to save one’s own life, is not unlawful, seeing that 

it is natural to everything to keep itself in ‘being,’ as far as 

possible.” Summa Theologica, supra, pt. II-II, q. 64, art. 7. But 

killing a just or innocent is wrong because “the life of the 

righteous men preserves and forwards the common good.” Id.

art. 6, resp. Aquinas also noted that the fundamental right to 

defense did not extend to tumultuously rising up against the 

government in opposition to the “unity and peace of a people.” 

Id. q. 42, art. 1. “[S]edition is contrary to the unity of the

multitude.” Id. q. 42, art. 2. Citing to Augustine, Aquinas

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defines “sedition” as being against “the assembly of those who 

are united together in fellowship recognized by law and for the 

common good,” making “sedition . . . opposed to justice and 

the common good.” Id.; see also 2 St. Augustine, City of God,

Book II, ch. 21, at 75–76 (Marcus Dods, ed. & trans., 

Edinburgh, Murray & Gibb 1871) (defining “the people” as 

“being not every assemblage or mob, but an assemblage 

associated by a common acknowledgment of law, and by a 

community of interests”). But “[t]hose, however, who defend 

the common good, and withstand the seditious party, are not 

themselves seditious, even as neither is a man to be called 

quarrelsome because he defends himself.” Summa Theologica, 

supra, pt. II-II, q. 42, art. 2.10

These elementary sources teach that persons have a 

fundamental right to use arms to preserve innocent human life. 

But this liberty cannot be used harm another human life, or to 

rebel against a just government. Taken together, these 

principles instruct that the natural right of self-preservation

does not extend to bearing arms in a manner that undermines 

the common good. 

10 This principle does not criminalize individuals of the 

community from uprising against a tyrannical government. A 

“tyrannical government is not just, because it is directed, not to 

the common good, but to the private good of the ruler.” Summa 

Theologica, supra, pt. II-II, q. 42, art. 2. So “there is no sedition 

in disturbing a government of this kind.” Id.; see also

McWilliam, supra, at 154 (“Resistance to an unjust ruler is also 

an application of the ius naturale principle of 

self-defense. . . . As such, the natural law has a deep 

condemnation for unjust rulers who act for their own private 

good rather than for the common good and justice of all.”).

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B.

English practices applied and developed these 

principles. Blackstone pointed out that the right of all 

Englishmen to “hav[e] arms for [one’s] defence” is rooted in 

“the natural right of resistance and self-preservation.” 1 

Blackstone, Commentaries *143–44.

11 It was a “birthright,” 1 

Blackstone, Commentaries *140, that “appertain[ed] to every 

Englishmen,” id. at *136, an “ancient right[] and libert[y],” 

later codified by Parliament in the English Bill of Rights in 

1689, see Bill of Rights, 1 W. & M. Sess. 2 c. 2 (“[S]ubjects

which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable 

to their conditions and as allowed by law.”). John Locke 

echoed similar points, explaining that “by the fundamental law 

of nature . . . one may destroy a man who makes war upon 

him . . . for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; 

because such men are not under the ties of the common law of 

reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence.” John 

Locke, Second Treatise of Government, § 16 (1690). This 

11 See also William Blizard, Desultory Reflect on 

Police: With an Essay on the Means of Preventing Crimes and 

Amending Criminals 59–60 (London, 1785) (“The right of his 

majesty’s Protestant subjects, to have arms for their own 

defence, and to use them for lawful purposes, is most clear and 

undeniable. It seems, indeed, to be considered, by the ancient 

laws of this kingdom . . . . [This right is] most 

unquestionabl[e] . . . [and] most clearly established by the 

authority of judicial decisions and ancient acts of parliament, 

as well as by reason and common sense.”); 3 Blackstone, 

Commentaries *3–4 (“Self-defence, therefore, as it is justly 

called the primary law of nature, so it is not, neither can it be 

in fact, taken away by the law of society.”).

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comports with reason that “man [must] be preserved as much 

as possible,” but “when all cannot be preserved, the safety of 

the innocent is to be preferred.” Id.

But English history reflects the ancient prohibition on 

men exercising their fundamental rights to intentionally harm

the life or safety of another, or to rebel against a just 

government. 

1. For example, kings prohibited using arms against the 

community, with violators subject to disarmament. Alfred the 

Great proscribed violent acts with arms.

12 The Statute of 

Northampton, 2 Edw. 3, c. 3, followed in 1328 to address the 

dangers from “[b]ands of malefactors, knights as well as those 

of lesser degree,” that “harried the country, committing 

assaults and murders,” and the resulting “spirit of 

insubordination.” K. Vickers, England in the Later Middle 

Ages 107 (C. Oman ed., 4th ed. 1926); see also Edward Coke, 

The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England 160 

(London, M. Flesher 1644) (“For in those daies this deed of 

Chivalry was at random, whereupon great perill ensued . . . .”).

To enforce the Statute, Edward III ordered sheriffs to 

investigate “the malefactors who have made assemblies of 

men-at-arms or have ridden or gone armed in his bailiwick, 

contrary to the statute and the king’s proclamation.” Letter to 

12 See The Laws of King Alfred the Great §§ 7, 19, 38

(c. 878), reprinted in 3 The Whole Works of King Alfred the 

Great 119, 127, 129, 133 (Oxford, Messrs J.F. Smith & Co.

1852) (prohibiting “fight[ing]” or “draw[ing] out his weapon” 

in the “king’s hall,” “lend[ing] [one’s] weapon to another,” 

with the intent that the borrower would “slay a man with it,” 

use, by “a sword-whetter,” of another’s weapon to commit a 

crime, and “disturb[ing] the folk-mote with weapon drawing”).

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Keeper and Justices of Northumbridge (Oct. 28, 1332), 

reprinted in 2 Calendar of the Close Rolls, Edward III, 

1330–1333 610 (H.C. Maxwell Lyte ed., London, Eyre & 

Spottswood 1898). The Statute allowed the sovereign to 

“punish people who go armed to terrify the King’s subjects.”

Sir John Knight’s Case (1686) 87 Eng. Rep. 75, 76; 3 Mod. 

117, 118 (KB). That was “likewise a great offence at the 

common law, as if the King were not able or willing to protect 

his subjects.” Id. The Statute of Northampton thus followed the 

path of the classical law, demonstrating the right to carry arms 

could not license a right to cause public terror. See Bruen, 597 

U.S. at 45–46; United States v. Williams, 113 F.4th 637, 650 

(6th Cir. 2024); Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437, 456–57 (7th Cir. 

2019) (Barret, J. dissenting), abrogated by Bruen, 597 U.S. at 

70–71. 

But the Statute did not displace the right of using arms 

for self-defense and continued the understanding that an 

individual “may not onely use force and armes” but also

“assemble his friends and neighbors to keep his house against 

those that come to rob, or kill him, or to offer him violence.” 

The Third Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, at 

161–62. Use of force to oppose unlawful force is “by 

construction excepted out of this [Statute]” because the laws 

permit the taking up of arms against armed persons. Id. at 162

(“Armaque in Armatos sumere jura sinunt.”). As a result,

individuals with the “intent to defend themselves against their 

adversaries, are not within the meaning of this Statute, because 

they do nothing in terrorem populi.” 2 William Hawkins, A 

Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown ch. 63, § 9, at 22 (7th ed. 

1795).

Along with prohibiting affrays, the English surety 

system dating back to the Saxons also grounded the right to 

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15

bear arms. See 4 Blackstone, Commentaries *252. Though 

initially in the form of “decennaries or frank pledges” where 

the community mutually promised for a person’s good 

behavior, surety laws later converted into an individual offer 

of security guaranteeing their own good behavior. Id.; see also 

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 1899–1900. Under this system, “[a]ny 

justices of the peace” could demand a surety “according to their 

own discretion” or at the request of another provided “due 

cause [was] shown.” 4 Blackstone, Commentaries *253. 

Sureties were used to prevent two distinct types of future harm

by keeping the peace and ensuring good behavior. Id. at *251, 

254–56. Sureties complemented recognizances,

13 and “[a]ny 

justice of the peace” could “bind all those to keep the peace[,]

who in his presence make any affray, or threaten to kill or beat 

another, or contend together with hot and angry words, or go 

about with unusual weapons or attendance, to the terror of the 

people.” Id. at *254. Similarly, an individual could demand a 

surety from another when he “hath just cause to fear” that 

13 Recognizances for good behavior included “security 

for the peace,” but also covered “somewhat more.” 4 

Blackstone, Commentaries *256. Justices of the peace were 

empowered “to bind over to the good behaviour towards the 

king and his people” all individuals “that be not of good fame.” 

Id. The general phrase “not of good fame,” described men that 

acted “contra bonos mores,” meaning against good morals, or 

“contra pacem” meaning against the peace. Id.; see id.

(elaborating that this phrase applied to men who kept the 

company of “women of bad fame,” those who “tend[] to 

scandalize the government,” those who “abuse the officers of 

justice,” “common drunkards,” or “eaves-droppers”). All 

showing the moral basis for regulation to preserve the common 

good.

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another in the community would “do him a corporal injury, by 

killing, imprisoning[,] or beating him.” Id. at *255.

Accordingly, regardless of whether surety laws serve as 

proper historical evidence supporting disarmament before an 

individualized conviction of a violent crime, see Rahimi, 144 

S. Ct. at 1938–42 (Thomas, J., dissenting), the surety system 

illustrates the long-standing idea that liberty cannot be used for 

lawless violence, consistent with the natural law principles 

prohibiting individuals from exercising their right to bear arms 

to tarnish the shared life or dignity of the community.

2. English law also curtailed the right to bear arms of 

individuals suspected of treason or sedition against the 

sovereign. The Militia Act of 1662 authorized officers of the 

Crown to disarm any individual that either a Lieutenant or two 

or more Deputies “judge[d] dangerous to the Peace of the 

Kingdome,” to “[s]ecure the Peace of the Kindgome.” City of 

London Militia Act 1662, 14 Car. 2, c. 3, § 13. In practice, the

law was used to confiscate arms from anyone threatening the

absolute rule of King Charles II. See Stephen P. Halbrook, The 

Right to Bear Arms: A Constitutional Right of the People or a 

Privilege of the Ruling Class? 35–36, 60–61 (2021).

Similarly, the Game Act of 1670 imposed a property 

requirement for gun ownership, and effectively disarmed most 

commoners. 22 & 23 Car. 2, c. 25 (1670); The Right to Bear 

Arms, supra, at 36. As Blackstone explains, “prevention of 

popular insurrections and resistance to the government, by 

disarming the bulk of the people . . . is a reason oftener meant 

than avowed by the makers of forest or game laws.” 2 

Blackstone, Commentaries *412. And both laws were often 

used to disarm persons presumed disloyal, including 

Protestants under Charles II and James II. That Every Man Be 

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Armed, supra, at 43; see The Somers Papers, in 2 

Miscellaneous State Papers from 1501–1726 at 407, 417–18 

(W. Strahan and T. Cadell 1778).

But arbitrary use of this power left James II exiled, 

William and Mary on the throne, and Catholics disarmed under 

Protestant rule. See 1 W. & M. c. 15, § 4 (1688) (requiring all 

Catholics and presumed Catholics to swear loyalty to the 

Crown or forfeit their arms); see also The Right to Bear Arms, 

supra, at 60; Bill of Rights, 1 W. & M. Sess. 2 c. 2, § 7 (1689)

(codifying that only Protestants may have arms for 

self-defense). Under the reign of William and Mary, there was 

“cause to fear that a person, although technically an English

subject, was because of his beliefs effectively a resident enemy

alien liable to violence against the king.” See C. Kevin 

Marshall, Why Can’t Martha Stewart Have A Gun?, 32 Harv. 

J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 695, 723 (2009). Any such violence was 

considered treason because it would “affect the supreme 

executive power,” “amount[ing] either to a total renunciation 

of that allegiance, or at the least a criminal neglect of that duty, 

which is due from every subject to his sovereign.” 

4 Blackstone, Commentaries *75. As a result, “being Roman 

Catholic was equated with supporting James II and thus with 

presumptive treason.” Marshall, 32 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y at

721. This is because Roman Catholics essentially

“acknowledge[d] a foreign power, superior to the sovereignty

of the kingdom,” and thus they “[could not] complain if the

laws of that kingdom [did] not treat them upon the footing of

good subjects.” 4 Blackstone, Commentaries *55. But despite

this presumption, disarmament did not occur until an

individual declined to swear an oath of loyalty to the Protestant

king. Id. at 722–23. And even upon such refusal, an individual

could still keep “necessary [w]eapons . . . for the defence of his

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House or person.” 1 W. & M. c. 15, § 3 (1688); see also Joyce

Lee Malcolm, To Keep And Bear Arms 122–23 (1994) (“They

assumed that everyone had a right to own firearms unless he

could be conclusively convicted of Catholicism. Even in this

time of danger, Catholics were considered to have a right to

own arms for their personal defence and the defence of their

households.”). This historical strife between Catholics and 

Protestants reveals a fundamental principle about the right to 

have arms for self-defense: the king could disarm classes of 

people who posed true risk of sedition or treason to the 

sovereign.

14

* * *

In sum, as reflected in the English Bill of Rights,

bearing arms for self-defense was a fundamental right,

originating from the laws of nature. But that right was

restricted by laws prohibiting the use of arms to intentionally

cause terror or harm to members of the community. And

government could disarm classes of people that posed an actual

risk of sedition or treason. These traditions follow the classical

14 Notably, groups that were disarmed as dangerous by

posing risk of sedition or treason differed from individuals 

viewed as dangerous by causing intentional physical harm to 

another. Rather than posing harms directly to the subjects of 

the King, groups likely to revolt against the King posed a threat 

to the Order of the King. See 4 Blackstone, Commentaries 

*81–82 (“[T]reason” and “insurrection” amount to “a rebellion 

against the state, an usurpation of the powers of government, 

and an insolent invasion of the king’s authority.”). But “riot[s]” 

or crimes imagined to a neighbor’s land, home, or life were 

considered “no high treason” because they amount to “no 

general defiance of the public government.” Id. at *82. 

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principles of self-preservation, disallowance of public harm,

and the elementary view that because government exists for the

common good of the community, it may defend its own

existence.

C.

These principles are reflected in our Founding and the 

Second Amendment, exhibiting respect for the fundamental

right to bear arms and its natural limitation that one must not 

use that liberty to subvert the common good.

Spanning from the colonial generation to the Founders, 

history reveals that bearing arms for self-defense is rooted in 

the natural law.15 Recounting British history, Samuel Adams 

noted that James II disregarded the “natural, inherent, 

divinely[,] hereditary[,] and indefeasible rights of [his] 

subjects,” but praised the English constitution for restoring the 

country’s “original principles” and noted that the “bill of 

rights” “stands as a bulwark to the natural rights of subjects.” 

Samuel Adams, Boston Gazette, Feb. 27, 1769, at 3, col. 1. The 

natural right of self-defense was the core of John Adams’s 

defense of the soldiers on trial for the Boston Massacre, 

contending that “every private person is authorized to arm 

himself, and on the strength of this authority, [he did] not deny 

the inhabitants had a right to arm themselves at that time, for 

their defence, not for offence.” 3 Legal Papers of John Adams

15 This truth is not a historic relic. Today, still 

recognizing that certain rights predate government, “35 state 

constitutions expressly declare that rights are inherent or 

natural.” Nicholas J. Johnson et al., Firearms Law and the 

Second Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy 316 

(Rachel E. Barkow et al., 3d ed. 2022).

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248 (L. Kinvin Wroth & Hiller B. Zobel eds., 1965); see also 

id. at 245 (“The rules of the common law therefore, which 

authorize a man to preserve his own life at the expence of 

another’s, are not contradicted by any divine or moral law.”). 

Adams explained that the right of self-preservation “is not only 

our indisputable right, but our clearest duty, by the laws of 

nature, this is interwoven in the heart of every individual.” Id.

at 244. 

These principles influenced colonial America’s 

collective declaration of independence from Great Britain.16

16 See Simeon Howard, A Sermon Preached to the 

Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company in Boston (June 7, 

1773), in 1 American Political Writing During the Founding 

Era, 1760–1805 186, 201–02 (Charles S. Hyneman & Donald 

S. Lutz eds., 1983) (“Men are bound to preserve their own 

lives, as long as they can, consistently with their duty in other 

respects” and are “bound both by the law of nature and 

revelation, to provide in the best manner [they] can, for the 

temporal happiness of [their] famil[ies]. . . . It is therefore an 

act of benevolence to oppose and destroy that power which is 

employed in injuring others; and as much, when it is that of a 

tyrant, as of a wild beast.”); Thomas Paine, The Crisis I: These 

Are the Times that Try Men’s Souls (Dec. 23, 1776), reprinted

in 1 The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine at 50, 55–56 

(Phillip S. Foner, ed., 1945) (“[I]f a thief breaks into my house, 

burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill 

me, or those that are in it, and to ‘bind me in all cases 

whatsoever’ to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What 

signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common 

man; my countryman or not my countryman; whether it be 

done by an individual villain, or an army of them?”).

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Following the Revolution, several states recognized a right to 

bear arms for self-defense rooted in the natural law. See The 

Right to Bear Arms, supra, at 147–52 (detailing the specific 

protections in Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, 

Vermont, and Massachusetts declarations of rights); Nicholas 

J. Johnson et al., Firearms Law and the Second Amendment: 

Regulation, Rights, and Policy 309–17 (Rachel E. Barkow et 

al., 3d ed. 2022) (same). So too with the Second Amendment, 

which was “considered as the true palladium of liberty” 

because “[t]he right of self defence is the first law of nature.”

1 Blackstone, Commentaries, app. at 300 (St. George Tucker 

ed., 1803).

At the core of early America’s robust regard of the right 

to bear arms was “the great natural law of self-preservation” 

that gives rise to the necessity “for the defence of one’s person 

or house.” Collected Works of James Wilson 1142 (discussing 

the principles behind the Pennsylvania Constitution’s 

protection of the right to bear arms that date back to the Saxon 

era, where individuals “were bound” “to keep arms for the 

preservation of the kingdom, and of their own persons”). 

Affirming what reason suggests, American law holds that “a 

man has a perfect right to his life, to his personal liberty, and 

to his property,” thereby permitting a man “by force [to] assert 

and vindicate those rights against every aggressor.” Essays of 

Justice Story, supra, at 262. But the right to possess arms for 

self-preservation has long been regulated to prohibit violence 

against the people, and violence against the State—the same 

the two limitations found in English history, and the classical 

tradition.

1. Laws prohibiting use of arms to cause terror to

members of the community date back to colonial America. In 

1736, a Justice of the Peace in Virginia provided that it is the 

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duty of “[e]very constable, as a Minister of the Justice,” to 

“take away Arms from such who ride, or go, offensively 

armed, in Terror of the People, and may apprehend the Persons, 

and carry them, and their Arms, before a Justice of Peace.” 

George Webb, The Office and Authority of a Justice of Peace

92–93 (Williamsburg, William Parks 1736). Justices of the 

Peace in New Hampshire were instructed to do the same.

17 If 

“legal proof of any such offence” was presented, the justice 

was permitted to “commit him to prison” and “cause his arms 

or weapons to be taken away.” Acts and Laws of His Majesty’s 

Province of New Hampshire ch. 11 § 5 (1771). And colonial 

Massachusetts similarly prohibited “rid[ing] or go[ing] armed 

Offensively.” Mass. Province Laws ch. 18, § 6 (1692). 

These laws, which essentially copied the Statute of 

Northampton, carried over into Founding-era America.18 Like 

17 See Acts and Laws of His Majesty’s Province of New 

Hampshire ch. 11 § 5 (1771) (“[E]very justice of the peace 

within this province, may cause to be stayed and arrested all 

affrayers, rioters, disturbers or breakers of the peace, or any 

other that shall go armed offensively, to put his majesty’s 

subjects in fear by threat[e]ning speeches.”).

18 For example, Virginia enacted a near duplicate of the 

Statute: “No man, great nor small, of what condition soever he 

be . . . go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in fair or markets, 

or in other places, in terror of the county.” A Collection of All 

Such Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia at 33 (Virginia, 

Augustine Davis 1794). So too did North Carolina. See A 

Collection of Statutes of the Parliament of England in Force in 

the State of North Carolina 60–61 (New Bern, Francois-Xavier

Martin 1792) (“[N]o man great nor small, of what condition 

soever he be, . . . [shall] bring no force in affray of peace, nor 

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the original, these statutes prohibited persons from going 

armed to commit affrays or cause terror to the community.

19

The English surety regime also persisted, allowing temporary 

disarmament for violations. Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1900–01. All 

consistent with the traditional principle that the right to bear 

arms for self-defense must not be abused to physically harm 

members of the community.

2. Laws addressing danger to the State focused on 

groups viewed as disloyal to the government. Take Beacon’s 

Rebellion in 1676, when the rebels in James City County were 

temporarily disarmed. See The Right to Bear Arms, supra, at 

111–13; id. at 113 (“The restraint was only during the 

rebellion. Now every man may bear arms.”). And during the 

French and Indian War, Catholics who refused to swear an oath 

of undivided allegiance were prohibited from possessing “in 

his house or elsewhere” any “arms, weapons, gunpowder[,] or 

to go nor ride armed by night nor by day, in fairs, markets nor 

in the presence of the King’s Justices, or other ministers, nor 

in no part elsewhere.”). The District of Columbia seemingly 

proposed similar draft legislation, although it is unclear 

whether that draft legislation ever carried force of law. See

Code of Laws for the District of Columbia: Prepared Under 

the Authority of The Act of Congress of the 29th of April, 1816

253–54 (Washington, Davis & Force 1818).

19 Because affrays were considered “crimes against the 

personal safety of the citizens,” Collected Works of James 

Wilson 1138, as a penalty, individuals had to forfeit their 

armour to the government. See Essays of Justice Story, supra,

at 97 (“The right of society to punish offences against its safety 

and good order will scarcely be doubted by any considerate 

person.”).

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ammunition.” 7 William Waller Hening, The Statutes at Large; 

Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia 36–37

(Richmond, Franklin Press 1820).20 Why? Because “Protestant 

colonial governments feared that loyalty to the Pope would 

cause Catholics to take up arms for France.” United States v. 

Jackson, 85 F.4th 468, 471 (8th Cir. 2023) (Stras, J., dissenting 

from denial of rehearing en banc).

Unsurprisingly, the Revolutionary War led to 

widespread disarmament of loyalists. See Joseph G.S. 

Greenlee, Disarming the Dangerous: The American Tradition 

of Firearm Prohibitions, 16 Drexel L. Rev. 1, 61–63 (2024) 

(detailing eight orders and laws disarming loyalists to 

“suppress[]” “enemies to American Liberty,” one of which was 

issued by George Washington). In New York, “any person or 

persons” convicted of “having furnished the ministerial army 

or navy . . . with provisions or other necessaries . . . shall be 

disarmed.” Resolutions of September 1, 1775, reprinted in 1 

Journals of the Provincial Congress, Provincial Convention, 

Committee of Safety and Council of Safety of the State of New 

York 131, 132 (Albany, Thurlow Weed 1842). South Carolina 

prohibited any person from “bear[ing] arms against” or 

20 See also Robert H. Churchill, Gun Regulation, the 

Police Power, and the Right to Keep Arms in Early America: 

The Legal Context of the Second Amendment, 25 L. & Hist. 

Rev. 139, 157 (2007) (explaining that colonial Virginia “acted 

to disarm Catholics” “not on the basis of faith” but on “the 

basis of allegiance”); Johnson et al., supra, at 197 

(summarizing Maryland laws that forbid possession of 

firearms and ammunition by “Marylanders who refused to 

swear loyalty to King George III” and legislation passed by the 

lower house to disarm any “Papist within [the] Province”).

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“opposing the measures of the Continental or Colony 

Congress,” punishable by disarmament. Resolutions of March

13, 1776, reprinted in Journal of the Provincial Congress of 

South Carolina, 1776 77, 77 (London, J. Almon 1776). And 

Massachusetts disarmed any person convicted of “being 

notoriously inimical to the cause of American Liberty.” 

Resolutions of July 25 and July 26, 1776, reprinted in 1 

American Archives: Fifth Series 588, 588 (Peter Force ed.,

1848). All show that those who committed the specific offense 

of sedition or treason could be disarmed for a time. 

3. Practices around the Founding reflect principles that 

allowed disarmament of individuals who endangered the 

community by physically harming another, and of individuals 

who exhibited dangerousness by seeking to overthrow the 

government. The Second Amendment’s ratification process 

exhibits both the distinctiveness and enduring nature of these 

two principles. At their state ratifying conventions, 

Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Pennsylvania each 

proposed limiting language to the Second Amendment 

arguably tied to dangerousness. See Kanter, 919 F.3d at 454 

(Barret, J., dissenting) (noting that “each of these proposals 

included limiting language arguably tied to criminality”).

21

Language proposed in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts 

reflects that those who breached the peace were proscribed 

from bearing arms. In Massachusetts, Samuel Adams drafted 

the following proposed amendment, “[T]hat the said 

Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress . . . to 

21 These proposed amendments are part of “[t]he bestavailable-evidence” of “the practice in the early Republic.” Lee 

J. Strang, Originalism’s Promise: A Natural Law Account of 

the American Constitution 69 (2019). 

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26

prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable 

citizens, from keeping their own arms.” Massachusetts 

Convention Journal (Feb. 6, 1788), reprinted in 6 The 

Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution 

1452, 1453 (John P. Kaminski et al. eds., 2000) (emphasis 

added). “Peaceable citizens” were those who did not commit a 

“breach of the peace,” meaning those who did not 

“violat[e] . . . the public peace, as by a riot, affray, or any 

tumult which is contrary to law, and destructive to the public 

tranquility.” Breach, in 1 Noah Webster, An American 

Dictionary of the English Language (New York, S. Converse 

1828). And in Pennsylvania, twenty-one of the twenty-three 

members who voted against ratification proposed the following 

amendment: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the 

defense of themselves and their own state, or the United States, 

or for the purpose of killing game; and no law shall be passed 

for disarming the people or any of them, unless for crimes 

committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals.” 

The Address and Reasons of Dissent of the Minority of the 

Convention of the State of Pennsylvania to their Constituents

(Dec. 18, 1787), reprinted in 2 The Documentary History of 

the Ratification of the Constitution 618, 623–24 (Merrill 

Jensen et al. eds., 1976) (emphasis added). The natural reading 

of these proposals is that “crimes committed” concern acts 

posing a “real danger of public injury.” Kanter, 919 F.3d at 456 

(Barrett, J., dissenting). This reading accords with the natural 

law principle against taking innocent life that informs

American firearm regulations. 

In contrast, the language proposed by New Hampshire 

restricted the right to bear arms to those who had not engaged 

in rebellion: “Congress shall never disarm any Citizen, unless 

such as are or have been in actual Rebellion.” New Hampshire 

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27

Form of Ratification (June 21, 1788), reprinted in 28 The 

Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution 

376, 378 (John P. Kaminski et al. eds., 2017) (emphasis 

added). Citizens who “are or have been in actual Rebellion” is 

not synonymous with all felons or criminals. This proposal 

targets individuals who committed the distinct crime of 

rebellion, which means “taking up Arms against the Supreme 

Power.” Rebellion, New Universal Etymological English 

Dictionary (20th ed. 1763). But New Hampshire’s proposal 

“does not say anything about disarming those who have 

committed other crimes, much less nonviolent ones.” Kanter, 

919 F.3d at 455 (Barrett, J., dissenting). 

4. At least two distinct principles run continuous 

throughout history from Cicero to Founding-era America. 

First, the right to bear arms is not a license to physically harm 

another. Second, an individual cannot exercise that right to 

rebel against a just government ordered for the common good. 

Penalty for acting adverse to either principle often amounted 

to disarmament.22 These principles are the hallmark of our 

Nation’s firearm regulations.

22 But such disarmament was not absolute, and I echo 

Judge Roth’s call for greater executive review of petitions to 

restore firearm rights, regardless of whether Congress provides 

funding for 18 U.S.C. § 925(c). See Concurring Op. at 11 n.18;

see also Cross v. Buschman, No. 22-3194, 2024 WL 3292756, 

at *5 (3d Cir. July 3, 2024) (Matey, J., concurring) (“The 

Eighth Amendment binds all federal actors, and the President 

has a duty to ensure his subordinates comply with the 

Amendment’s demands.”). That is because “the President 

holds an independent duty to ensure that the Constitution’s 

guarantees are followed.” Cross, 2024 WL 3292756, at *5

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28

Many reasonable minds read this history to support a 

different answer, and only one broad principle: the legislature 

can categorically disarm anyone labeled “dangerous.”

23 But 

that is too vague a conception of “dangerousness.” True, both 

ideas contain types of dangerous individuals, and both center 

on classifications designed, or at least recognized, by 

government. But the type of danger posed, and the punishment 

prescribed, makes the difference. Laws imposing class wide 

disarmament were enacted during times of war or civil strife 

(citing Gary Lawson & Christopher D. Moore, The Executive 

Power of Constitutional Interpretation, 81 Iowa L. Rev. 1267, 

1287 (1996) (“Once the President has interpreted the law that 

he has the power to enforce or execute, a second interpretative 

stage emerges: the President must then determine whether the 

law is consistent with the Constitution. The President, no less 

than Congress or the courts, operates under the Constitution as 

supreme positive law . . . . The need to interpret the 

Constitution as a source of positive law, and to prefer the 

Constitution to any other source of law with which it may 

conflict, is as much a part of ‘[t]he executive Power’ vested in 

the President as it is part of ‘[t]he judicial Power’ vested in the 

federal courts. The Constitution is law, and the executive 

power of law interpretation includes the power and duty to 

interpret the Constitution.”)). All to say, it is time to examine 

the Attorney General’s independent obligation to review these 

petitions, as well as the propriety of continuing to delegate this 

responsibility to the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, 

Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives when that agency has been 

thwarted from carrying out its duty.

23 See Williams, 113 F.4th at 656–57; United States v. 

Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120, 1127 (8th Cir. 2024); see also

Dissenting Op. at 6–8, 8 n.8.

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29

where separate sovereigns competed for loyalty. See Jackson, 

85 F.4th at 472 (Stras, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing 

en banc) (“[T]he decades surrounding the ratification of the 

Second Amendment showed a steady and consistent practice. 

People considered dangerous lost their arms. But being a 

criminal had little to do with it.”). And laws disarming an 

individual for dangerous conduct harming another member of 

the community centered on individualized review of specific 

acts.

24 Combining these principles to reach a higher level of 

generality discounts the history and, most importantly, 

disregards the natural law principles explaining why we 

possess the right to bear arms.

D.

We have wandered far from the reason and spirit of the 

Second Amendment. The first federal ban on felons possessing 

firearms arrived one hundred and forty-seven years after the 

24 In theory, the implications of both principles may not 

be as siloed when assessing a facial challenge to § 922(g)(1). 

For example, there are many individuals convicted of felonies 

for sedition or murder, which could show that § 922(g)(1) may 

not be unconstitutional in all contexts. See United States v. 

Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987) (explaining that in a “facial 

challenge to a legislative Act . . . the challenger must establish 

that no set of circumstances exists under which the Act would 

be valid”). But that is not the case here because Range asserts 

an as-applied challenge. See United States v. Marcavage, 609 

F.3d 264, 273 (3d Cir. 2010) (“An as-applied attack, in 

contrast, does not contend that a law is unconstitutional as 

written[,] but [rather] that its application to a particular person 

under particular circumstances deprived that person of a 

constitutional right.”).

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Amendment’s ratification. The Federal Firearms Act, 

§ 922(g)(1)’s predecessor, prohibited any individual convicted 

of a “crime of violence” to possess a firearm or ammunition. 

An Act to Regulate Commerce in Firearms, ch. 850, § 2(f), 52 

Stat. 1250, 1251 (1938). Congress defined a “crime of 

violence” as “murder, manslaughter, rape, mayhem, 

kidnapping, burglary, housebreaking[,] assault with intent to 

kill, commit rape, or rob[,] assault with a dangerous weapon, 

or assault with intent to commit any offense publishable by 

imprisonment for more than one year.” Id. § 1(6). Disarming 

individuals who exhibited that conduct made sense because 

they engaged in conduct that harmed the physical safety of 

individuals in the community. But twenty-three years later, 

Congress swept in all felonies, not just crimes of violence, see

An Act to Strengthen the Federal Firearms Act, Pub. L. No. 87-

342 § 2, 75 Stat. 757, 757 (1961), thus abandoning reason, 

which permitted disarmament of individuals to protect the 

safety of the community or the existence of the government. 

That hollowed place is where the enacted law remains today.

Such a law cannot be applied to Range who does not 

exhibit behavior intentionally threatening the life or safety of 

another. And there is no suggestion that Range threatens the 

government’s existence with sedition or treason. So disarming 

him is unnecessary to ensure the physical safety of the 

community, or the continuity of government. See McWilliam, 

supra, at 158 (“[O]ne must ask not only whether the statute 

comports with the broader ius naturale principles, but also with 

the general principles specifically determined within the 

Second Amendment.”).

Because the majority correctly concludes that 

§ 922(g)(1)’s application to Range is repugnant to the 

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31

fundamental principles captured by the Second Amendment, I 

concur.

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1

PHIPPS, Circuit Judge, concurring.

I join the Majority Opinion in full because this case may be 

resolved on narrow grounds: there is no historical analogue for 

permanently disarming a citizen based on a prior conviction for 

food-stamp fraud.

1

 I write separately to point out additional 

important “principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,”

2

specifically those related to the liberties of a free people. 

Application of these principles lends further support to the 

outcome in this case and in future cases will balance and 

safeguard the legal analysis so that it does not skew in favor of 

disarmament.

Appreciation of these principles begins with a recognition 

that the Founders were practical, prudent, and well-read.

3

 They 

1 See N.Y. State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 30 

(2022) (“[W]hether modern and historical regulations impose 

a comparable burden on the right of armed self-defense and 

whether that burden is comparably justified are central 

considerations when engaging in an analogical inquiry.” 

(internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting McDonald v. City 

of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 767 (2010))).

2 United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 692 (2024).

3 See Carl J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics: Greece, 

Rome, and the American Enlightenment 53–168 (1994) 

(detailing how the Founders used Roman and Greek history 

and political thought to guide their critique of Britain and 

design of America); id. at 118 (“Ancient history provided the 

founders with a large body of information, knowledge which 

they used both to make sense of the confusing events of their 

day and to construct arguments for their political positions.”);

Donald S. Lutz, The Relative Influence of European Writers on

Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought, 78 Am. 

Pol. Sci. Rev. 189, 192–95 (1984) (detailing the Founders’ 

fluency in Montesquieu, Blackstone, Locke, Hume, and 

Beccaria, as well as Plutarch, Cicero, Livy, Tacitus, and Plato). 

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2

fled from and rebelled against a nation that took away the right 

to keep and bear arms4and that used its military to occupy 

4 See Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The 

Origins of an Anglo-American Right 23–134 (1997) (tracing 

English republicans’ disarming of Royalist sympathizers and 

Catholics; the restored Royalists’ disarming of republicans and 

the “disaffected”; the aristocracy’s disarming of commoners 

with game laws enforceable by the aristocrats themselves; and 

the renewed disarming of Catholics by a Protestant king and 

then Protestants by a Catholic king, until the right was affirmed 

in 1689); Stephen P. Halbrook, The Founders’ Second 

Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms 9–74 (2008) 

(detailing British attempts to disarm Colonists from the late 

1760s, and the resistance up and down the colonies, until the 

outbreak of hostilities); 1 James Burgh, Political 

Disquisitions; or, An Enquiry into Public Errors, Defects, and 

Abuses 464 (1775) (“A general exercise of the best of their 

people in the use of arms, was the only bulwark of their 

liberties.”); Leonard W. Levy, Origins of the Bill of Rights 138

(1999) (opining that Burgh’s Political Disquisitions “was 

probably more influential in America than John Locke’s 

work”); A Declaration by the Representatives of the United 

Colonies of North America, Now Met in General Congress at 

Philadelphia, Setting Forth the Causes and Necessity of Their 

Taking Up Arms, reprinted in 37 Documentary History of the 

Ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights 49 (John 

P. Kaminski et al. eds., 2020) (complaining to King George III, 

alongside the last-ditch Olive Branch Petition, that Colonists

had “delivered up their arms” to be later returned, yet “the 

Governor [of Massachusetts] ordered the arms . . . to be seized 

by a body of soldiers”); id. at 46 (“Our forefathers, inhabitants 

of the island of Great Britain, left their native land, to seek on 

these shores a residence for civil and religious freedom.”); 

St. George Tucker, 1 Blackstone’s Commentaries app. 300 

(1803) (“In England, . . . the right of bearing arms is confined 

to [P]rotestants, and the words suitable to their condition and 

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3

several American cities.5 The Founders wished to enshrine 

that right in the core organic document of this Nation – our 

Constitution.6 Of course, the Founders knew that firearms 

were dangerous and capable of abuse. But an individual right 

to keep and bear arms7 promotes self-defense and protects

degree, have been interpreted to authorize the prohibition of 

keeping a gun . . . [s]o that not one man in five hundred can 

keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.”).

5 See generally Donald F. Johnson, Occupied America: British 

Military Rule and the Experience of Revolution (2023) 

(detailing British military occupations of Boston, New York, 

Newport, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Savannah, and those 

occupations’ catalyst effect upon revolutionary sentiment); see 

also BOSTON, March 12., Bos. Gazette, Mar. 12, 1770, at 3 

(counting three dead and eight wounded at the Boston 

Massacre); L. Kinvin Wroth & Hiller B. Zobel, The Boston 

Massacre Trials, 55 A.B.A. J. 329, 329 (1969) (reporting that 

two of the wounded succumbed to their injuries, bringing the 

death total to five).

6 See U.S. Const. amend. II; see also 3 Joseph Story, 

Commentaries on the Constitution §§ 1890–91 (1833), 

reprinted in 5 The Founders’ Constitution, supra, at 214 (“The 

right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been 

considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since 

it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and 

arbitrary power of rulers; . . . it is at present in England more 

nominal then real, as a defensive privilege.”); William Rawle, 

A View of the Constitution of the United States 125–26 (2d ed. 

1829), reprinted in 5 The Founders’ Constitution, supra, at 

214 (Philip B. Kurland & Ralph Lerner eds., 1987) (“No clause 

in the Constitution could by any rule of construction be 

conceived to give to congress a power to disarm the 

people . . . .”).

7 See District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 595 (2008)

(“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and 

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4

against anarchy, rebellion, and foreign invasion.8 And so, the

right was sewn into our Nation’s founding fabric, with the 

enemies of this Country and our individual liberties being the 

ones who had most opposed it.

9

It is against these principles – deeply against them – to flog 

the historical record until it suggests some analogue or 

principle justifying disarmament, no matter how abstracted, 

attenuated, or ahistorical that analogue or principle may be. In 

particular, it is a mistake to read the Second Amendment as 

permitting the most extreme forms of disarmament in the 

history of England and colonial America. While the Founders 

adopted many venerable English legal principles and 

traditions, such as those developed at common law and in

history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual 

right to keep and bear arms.”).

8 See, e.g., Burgh, supra note 4, at 401 (“And if the generality 

of housekeepers were only half-disciplined, a designing prince, 

or ministry, would hardly dare to provoke the people by an 

open attack against their liberties . . . . But without the 

people’s having some knowledge of arms, I see not what is to 

secure them against slavery, whenever it shall please a daring 

prince, or minister, to resolve on making the experiment. See 

the histories of all the nations of the world.”); Richard Henry 

Lee, Federal Farmer No. 3 (1787), reprinted in

19 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution 

and the Bill of Rights 219 (John P. Kaminski et al. eds., 2020) 

(“[T]he yeomanry of the country . . . possess arms, and are too 

strong a body of men to be openly offended . . . .”). 

9 See, e.g., Halbrook, supra note 4, at 78–109 (recounting how, 

after British soldiers executed civilians on their retreat from 

Lexington and Concord, royal governors attempted to disarm 

the people, and Great Britain placed an embargo on the 

importation of arms to America). 

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5

equity,

10 they broke ranks with the past in several respects. For 

instance, titles of nobility were used in England, but the 

Constitution expressly prohibits them.11 If that prohibition did 

not include titles of nobility that were part of the English 

historical tradition, then it would be close to meaningless. 

Similarly, the Second Amendment cannot be read to permit the 

extreme forms of disarmament used in England and colonial 

America while under British rule; the Founders rejected those 

forceful suppressions of their liberties.

12

 Nor do the 

disarmament measures taken by the American States during 

the Revolutionary War in response to a person’s refusal to take 

a loyalty oath serve as useful analogues.

13

 As the Majority 

10 See U.S. Const. art. III, § 2, cl. 1 (“The judicial Power shall 

extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity . . . .”).

11 See U.S. Const. art. I, § 9, cl. 8 (“No Title of Nobility shall 

be granted by the United States . . . .”).

12 See The Declaration of Independence para. 13 (U.S. 1776) 

(“[The King] has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing 

Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.”); id. para. 14 

(“He has affected to render the Military independent of and 

superior to the Civil power.”); id. para. 27 (“He is at this time 

transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat 

the works of death, desolation and tyranny . . . .”); id. para. 28 

(“He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the 

high Seas to bear Arms against their Country . . . .”).

13 See, e.g., 4 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789

205 (Worthington Chauncey Ford ed., 1906) (calling upon the 

States “immediately to cause all persons to be disarmed . . . 

who are notoriously disaffected to the cause of America, or 

who have not associated, and shall refuse to associate, to 

defend, by arms, these United Colonies, against the hostile 

attempts of the British fleets and armies”); G.A. Gilbert, The 

Connecticut Loyalists, 4 Am. Hist. Rev. 273, 280–82 (1899) 

(recounting Connecticut’s disarming those who spoke against 

the Continental Congress and were “inimical” to the American 

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6

Opinion explains, ‘the people’ entitled to the right to keep and 

bear arms consists only of citizens. So, a person who did not 

wish to belong to the new American nation would hardly have 

been one of ‘the people’ entitled to keep and bear arms. In 

sum, the most relevant historical principles for disarming a 

citizen are those grounded in the more stable and enduring 

aspects of our legal tradition, such as the common law and 

equity – as opposed to the principles underlying the excesses 

of the Crown or Parliament or even those supporting 

Revolutionary War measures in response to persons who 

retained foreign allegiances.

cause); Act of Mar. 14, 1776, 1775–76 Mass. Acts ch. 21 §§ 1–

2, 8 (Massachusetts’s disarming all persons over sixteen not 

being Quakers who would not adopt the American cause as 

their own and swear to assist its defense); An Act Empowering 

the Members of the Upper and Lower Houses of Assembly, to 

Tender to Such of the Inhabitants as are Hereinafter 

Mentioned, a Declaration, or Test, for Subscription (1776),

reprinted in 7 Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and 

Providence Plantations in New England 566–68 (John Russell 

Bartlett ed., 1862) (same); Act of May 1777, 177 Va. Acts 

ch. 3, reprinted in 9 The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection 

of All the Laws of Virginia 281–82 (William Waller Hening 

ed., 1821) (disarming all who refused a loyalty oath and were 

not excepted from taking it); Act of 1777, 1777 S.C. Acts ch. 6 

§ 9, reprinted in 24 The State Records of North Carolina 90 

(Walter Clark ed., 1905) (same); Resolution of Mar. 13, 1776, 

reprinted in Journal of the Provincial Congress of South 

Carolina, 1776 77–78 (1776) (disarming those who bore arms 

against the Continental or Colony Congress, or opposed either, 

and requiring a loyalty oath to be rehabilitated and rearmed);

An Ordinance Respecting the Arms of Non-Associators, 1776 

Pa. Laws ch. 729 (July 19, 1776), reprinted in 9 The Statutes 

at Large of Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801 11 (James T. 

Mitchell & Henry Flanders eds., 1903) (ordering the 

disarmament of “non-associators”).

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7

From that perspective, I see no historical analogue for the 

lifetime disarmament of an otherwise free citizen. It is as 

ancient as it is obvious that a person who is imprisoned or 

otherwise confined does not have the right to bear arms for the 

duration of confinement. Similarly, non-confined citizens who 

are still within the criminal justice system through parole or 

supervised release may have their freedoms, including the right 

to bear arms, limited if justified as a penal measure. Critically, 

in those circumstances, the loss of the right to bear arms is 

effectuated through an adjudicative process with the 

availability of the full panoply of constitutional rights for the 

accused and the convicted – and there are procedures available 

to directly appeal and collaterally challenge any infringement 

of a constitutional right.

14

 But once a citizen repays his debt to 

society, a legislative restriction on the right to keep and bear 

arms based on nothing more than a prior conviction is without 

relevant historical antecedent.15 And legislation permanently 

14 Similar procedures are available in civil commitment 

proceedings to protect against a permanent revocation of 

liberty for persons with serious mental illnesses – a loss of 

liberty may occur only as long as it is constitutionally justified,

and it must be subject to periodic review. See O’Connor v. 

Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 575 (1975) (explaining that “even if 

[a person’s] involuntary confinement was initially permissible, 

it could not constitutionally continue after that basis no longer 

existed” (citations omitted)); see Clark v. Cohen, 794 F.2d 79, 

86 (3d Cir. 1986) (explaining that “due process require[s]

periodic reviews of [a person’s] continuing need for 

institutionalization . . . because if the basis for a commitment 

ceases to exist, continued confinement violates the substantive 

liberty interest in freedom from unnecessary restraint” (internal 

citation omitted)).

15 See Story, supra note 6, at §§ 1890–91 (“The right of the 

citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as 

the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a 

strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power 

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8

disarming a person who has already repaid his debt to society 

is even further removed from our Founding-era heritage.

16

 

of rulers; . . . it is at present in England more nominal then real, 

as a defensive privilege.”); Rawle, supra note 6, at 125–26 

(“No clause in the Constitution could by any rule of 

construction be conceived to give to congress a power to 

disarm the people . . . .”). 

16 It is true that before enacting the felon-in-possession statute

in 1965, the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile 

Delinquency of the Senate Judiciary Committee heard 

testimony from Attorney General Katzenbach in which he 

opined that “[w]ith respect to the second amendment, the 

Supreme Court of the United States long ago made it clear that 

the amendment did not guarantee to any individuals the right 

to bear arms.” Federal Firearms Act: Hearings Before the 

Subcomm. to Investigate Juv. Delinq., 89th Cong. 41 (1965) 

(statement of Att’y Gen. Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach);

see also id. (exhibit 7) (reporting with respect to the felon-inpossession’s predecessor statute that “[a]t the time of the 

passage of the National Firearms Act in 1934 and the 

consideration and passage by Congress of the Federal Firearms 

Act from 1935 to 1938, the second amendment was not 

considered to be an obstacle” and advising that “[d]ecisions 

applying Federal firearms legislation hold that the second 

amendment was not, as the first amendment was, adopted with 

individual rights in mind, but was a prohibition upon Federal 

action which would interfere with the organization by States of 

their militia”). That advice has not aged well. See Heller, 

554 U.S. at 595 (2008), see also Op. Off. of Legal Counsel, 

Whether the Second Amendment Secures a Legal Right 28 

(2004) (“[T]he Second amendment secures a personal right of 

individuals, not a collective right that may only be invoked by 

a state or a quasi-collective right restricted to those persons 

who serve in organized militia units.”). So there is more than 

a hairline crack in the legal foundation for the felon-inpossession statutory provision. 

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9

Thus, any law imposing a permanent restriction on “the right 

of the people to keep and bear Arms”

17 is constitutionally 

suspect as a facial matter, and here, the application of 

18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) to permanently disarm Bryan Range 

after he repaid his debt to society for his food-stamp fraud 

violates the Second Amendment.

17 U.S. Const. amend. II.

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1

KRAUSE, Circuit Judge, concurring in the judgment, with 

whom ROTH, Circuit Judge, joins in part.

When this case was previously before us, I urged that 

we assess whether firearm regulations were constitutionally 

permissible in the present by comparing historical analogues in

principle, not with precision. Hewing precisely to history and 

tradition would only make sense in a world where “arms” still 

meant muskets and flintlock pistols,1and where communities 

were still small and “close-knit.”2 In contrast, the firearms of 

America today include semi-automatic handguns, assault 

rifles,3and high-capacity magazines; our population of more 

than 330 million is mobile and far-flung; and, tragically, brutal 

gun deaths and horrific mass shootings—exceeding 490 this

1 See Joseph Blocher & Eric Ruben, Originalism-by-Analogy 

and Second Amendment Adjudication, 133 Yale L.J. 99, 153 

(2023) (“Americans in 1791 generally owned muzzle-loading 

flintlocks, liable to misfire and incapable of firing multiple 

shots. Guns thus generally were not kept or carried loaded in 

1791.” (quotation omitted)); Akhil Reed Amar, Second 

Thoughts, 65 Law & Contemp. Probs. 103, 107 (2002) (“At the 

Founding . . . [a] person often had to get close to you to kill 

you, and, in getting close, he typically rendered himself vulnerable to counterattack. Reloading took time, and thus one 

person could not ordinarily kill dozens in seconds.”).

2 Stephanos Bibas, The Machinery of Criminal Justice 2 

(2012).

3 See Robert J. Spitzer, Gun Accessories and the Second 

Amendment: Assault Weapons, Magazines, and Silencers, 83 

Law & Contemp. Probs. 231, 240 (2020) (“[A]ssault weapons 

play a disproportionately large role in three types of criminal 

activity: mass shootings, police killings, and gang activity.”).

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2

year—are a daily occurrence in our schools, our streets, and 

our places of worship.4 After observing that the balancing of 

public safety with the right to bear arms has historically been a 

core function of the legislature in our system of separated 

powers,5that the balance Congress struck in 18 U.S.C. 

§ 922(g)(1) by categorically disarming convicted felons6

comported with traditional legislative authority to impose even 

4 See Mass Shootings in 2024, Gun Violence Archive, 

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting (last 

visited Dec. 23, 2024).

5 See Adam Winkler, Scrutinizing the Second Amendment, 105 

Mich. L. Rev. 683, 715 (2007) (“Achievement of that balance 

requires highly complex socio-economic calculations regarding what kinds of weapons ought to be possessed by individuals and how to limit access to them by those deemed untrustworthy or dangerous. Such complicated multi-factor judgments require trade-offs that courts are not institutionally 

equipped to make. Legislatures, by contrast, are structured to 

make precisely those kinds of determinations.”); see also Lon 

L. Fuller, The Forms and Limits of Adjudication, 92 Harv. L. 

Rev. 353, 371 (1978) (noting the “relative incapacity of adjudication to solve ‘polycentric’ problems”).

6 Section 922(g)(1) makes it illegal for anyone convicted of “a 

crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one 

year” to possess a firearm, unless the crime is a state misdemeanor “punishable by a term of imprisonment of two years or 

less” or relates to “antitrust violations, unfair trade practices, 

restraints of trade, or other similar offenses relating to the regulation of business practices.” 18 U.S.C. §§ 921(a)(20), 

922(g)(1). For ease of reference, this opinion refers to all 

crimes covered by § 922(g)(1) as “felonies” and individuals 

falling within § 922(g)(1)’s purview as “felons.” 

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greater deprivations like capital punishment, and that Congress

had provided mechanisms in 18 U.S.C. §§ 921(a)(20) and 

925(c) by which an individual offender could seek to lift his 

disability, I concluded that § 922(g)(1) was constitutional as 

applied to all felons within its scope, and I dissented on that 

basis. I also urged that, rather than proceeding on an offenseby-offense basis and implying that § 922(g)(1) had never been 

enforceable against a felon “like Range,”7the majority instead 

should make clear that Range had successfully challenged only 

its future enforcement, in effect, lifting the disability that had 

been lawfully imposed based on § 922(g)(1)’s rebuttable 

presumption of constitutionality.

Since then, the Supreme Court decided United States v. 

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 1889 (2024), and vacated and remanded our 

Court’s en banc decision for reconsideration in light of its 

teachings.8 I take from Rahimi several lessons that compel a 

different rationale than the majority’s today and that lead me

now to concur in the judgment. 

The first three confirm the premises of my prior 

opinion: (1) we should indeed determine “whether the 

challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that 

underpin our regulatory tradition”—not whether it “precisely 

match[es] its historical precursors,” id. at 1898 (emphasis 

added); (2) the Second Amendment does permit “the 

enactment of laws banning the possession of guns by 

categories of persons thought by a legislature to present a 

special danger of misuse,” id. at 1901 (emphasis added), and 

7 Range v. Attorney Gen. (Range I), 69 F.4th 96, 106 (3d Cir. 

2023), judgment vacated sub nom. Garland v. Range, 144 S. 

Ct. 2706 (2024).

8 See Garland, 144 S. Ct. at 2706–07.

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4

in particular, “prohibitions . . . on the possession of firearms by 

‘felons and the mentally ill,’” which the Court reiterated are 

“presumptively lawful,” id. at 1902 (quoting District of 

Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 626, 627 n.26 (2008)); and 

(3) the availability of a greater penalty for an analogous offense 

at the Founding implies that a lesser penalty is constitutional 

today, e.g., “if imprisonment was permissible” at the Founding 

for an offense, the “lesser restriction” of disarmament in 

modern times “is also permissible,” id.

In addition, however, Rahimi also flagged two aspects 

of a dispossession law as constitutionally relevant: first, that 

the burden the law imposes has at least the potential to be “of 

limited duration,” and, second, that—notwithstanding the 

authority of legislatures to disarm entire “categories of 

persons” presumed dangerous in the first instance—the law

allows an individual to challenge that presumption and 

establish that he does not currently “present a special danger of 

[firearm] misuse” or a “credible threat” to the safety of others.

Id. at 1901–02.9

9 The Court attached constitutional significance to these two 

statutory attributes in the context of a law that prohibited possession of a firearm only while “subject to a [domestic violence 

restraining] order” that included “a finding that such person 

represents a credible threat to the physical safety” of his domestic partner (or child). 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8). It also cautioned that its holding was a narrow one. See United States v.

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 1889, 1903 (2024) (“[T]oday . . . we conclude only this: An individual found by a court to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of another may be temporarily 

disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment.”). 

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Notwithstanding these lessons, my colleagues in the

majority have treated the Supreme Court’s remand as 

essentially pro forma and file an opinion today that is largely

unchanged. True, the majority now acknowledges that the 

relief it provides Range is only prospective protection from 

prosecution for “any future possession of a firearm,” and it 

seemingly acknowledges that § 922(g)(1) may be categorically 

applied, consistent with the Second Amendment, to at least 

“physically dangerous” felons.10 But it still disavows 

Congress’s power to categorically disarm other felons who fall 

within § 922(g)(1)’s parameters, and to do so on a 

presumptively permanent basis. It also still insists on 

analyzing § 922(g)(1) on an offense-by-offense basis, 

demanding that any historical analogue match with high 

precision, rather than reasoning by principle. And it again 

declines to articulate any clear framework by which courts may 

distinguish between constitutional and unconstitutional 

applications of § 922(g)(1). 

These aspects of the majority opinion are in error. I 

ultimately concur in the judgment, however, because Rahimi’s

reasoning persuades me that—even though our historical 

tradition supports § 922(g)(1)’s categorical disarmament of all 

Nonetheless, the repeated references to these attributes in the 

majority and concurring opinions and their anchoring in historical tradition suggest they carry constitutional weight more 

broadly. See, e.g., id. at 1902–03 (emphasizing the presence 

of “judicial determinations,” “f[indings] by a court,” and that 

those who posed a credible threat to the physical safety of another were only “temporarily disarmed”); id. at 1908–10 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (same); see also infra Section I.C.2.

10 Maj. Op. at 20; see also id. at 25.

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felons on a presumptively permanent basis—the Second 

Amendment demands that the disability it imposes has at least 

the potential to be “of limited duration,” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 

1902, and that a felon have a meaningful opportunity, after 

successfully serving his sentence,11 to show that the burden

should be lifted based on individualized findings. Indeed, the 

same historical analogues demonstrating that those who 

commit serious crimes can be disarmed as a class of persons 

that presumptively “present[s] a special danger of misus[ing]” 

firearms, id. at 1901, also confirm the necessity of providing

individual class members with a later opportunity to rebut that 

presumption and reclaim their Second Amendment rights 

going forward.

I write to clarify three points: First, the historical record 

reveals that, contrary to the majority’s view, legislatures dating 

back to the Founding had the authority to disarm not just 

“physically dangerous” felons, but a wide range of groups

considered to present a special danger, while also allowing for 

individual pre-enforcement challenges. Second, the majority’s 

reasoning cannot be squared with Supreme Court and historical 

precedent, and its continued insistence on historical twins 

portends confusion and inconsistency among the district 

courts. And third, while we hold today that Range’s 

declaratory judgment entitles him to protection only for future 

firearm possession, at least two circuits have suggested that 

11 See United States v. Moore, 111 F.4th 266, 272 (3d Cir. 

2024) (holding that § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as applied to 

felons who are serving a criminal sentence on parole, probation, or supervised release because our historical tradition 

“yield[s] the principle that a convict may be disarmed while he 

completes his sentence and reintegrates into society”).

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successful as-applied challenges operate retroactively, making 

enforcement void ab initio and jeopardizing both pending 

§ 922(g)(1) indictments and convictions on direct appeal. See 

United States v. Williams, 113 F.4th 637, 657, 661–63 (6th Cir. 

2024); United States v. Diaz, 116 F.4th 458, 461, 469–70 & n.4 

(5th Cir. 2024). I take this opportunity to highlight the drastic 

consequences of that approach and to explain why a 

prospective approach comports with Bruen and Rahimi, is 

faithful to our regulatory tradition, and is administrable in 

practice. 

I. The Historical Validity of § 922(g)(1) 

More than a decade of precedent now illuminates the 

constitutionality of felon-in-possession bans and the Supreme 

Court’s methodology for reviewing them. The analysis that 

follows will (A) summarize the Court’s pronouncements concerning those bans, (B) survey the relevant regulatory tradition, 

and (C) consider how § 922(g)(1) fits within that regulatory 

tradition.

A. Felon-Dispossession Laws in the Court’s Recent 

Precedent

Repeatedly, the Supreme Court has told us that felonin-possession statutes are presumptively constitutional. In 

holding the “right of the people”12 protected by the Second 

12 In the first part of its analysis, the majority defends its belief 

that felons remain part of “the people,” so their firearm possession is presumptively protected, and the Government must 

prove its disarmament regulation comports with historical tradition. Maj. Op. at 11–16. Other jurists believe that historical 

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Amendment was an “individual right,” Justice Scalia’s seminal 

opinion in Heller specified this meant “the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens” to keep and bear arms, and therefore 

characterized “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by 

felons” as both “longstanding” and “presumptively lawful.”13 

554 U.S. at 579, 592, 626, 627 n.26, 635. 

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. 

Bruen, the Court clarified who qualifies as a “law-abiding” citizen when it explained that, despite the infirmity of New 

York’s may-issue open-carry licensing regime, “nothing in our 

analysis should be interpreted to suggest the unconstitutionality of the 43 States’ ‘shall-issue’ licensing regimes . . . [,] 

which often require applicants to undergo a [criminal] background check” and “are designed to ensure only that those 

bearing arms in the jurisdiction are, in fact, ‘law-abiding, 

tradition permits the disarmament of felons precisely because 

“the people” historically meant “law-abiding, responsible citizens.” New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n, Inc. v. Bruen, 597 

U.S. 1, 26 (2022) (citation omitted). But that debate—unlike 

the test for what constitutes an adequate “historical analogue,” 

id. at 30 (quoting Drummond v. Robinson, 9 F.4th 217, 226 (3d 

Cir. 2021))—is largely academic. As then-Judge Barrett recognized, the “same body of evidence” can be used to illuminate 

who is part of the people or “the scope of the legislature’s 

power,” and either approach “yield[s] the same result.” Kanter 

v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437, 452 (7th Cir. 2019) (Barrett, J., dissenting).

13 See also McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 786 

(2010) (plurality) (“repeat[ing] those assurances”); Bruen, 597 

U.S. at 72 (Alito, J., concurring) (same); id. at 80–81 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (same).

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responsible citizens.’”14 597 U.S. 1, 38 n.9 (2022) (quoting 

Heller, 554 U.S. at 635). And it directed us, in considering 

whether modern-day regulations are consistent with historical

ones, to compare “how and why the regulations burden a lawabiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense.” Id. at 29 (emphasis added).

Most recently, in Rahimi, the Court reiterated that the 

Constitution does not prohibit regulations that ban “the possession of firearms by ‘felons and the mentally ill,’” which the 

Court held “presumptively lawful” even as applied to the 

“core”

15 right of self-defense inside the home. 144 S. Ct. at 

1902 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 626, 627 n.26). Citing Heller’s own assurance about the presumptive constitutionality of 

felon-dispossession laws, the Court disavowed any suggestion 

“that the Second Amendment prohibits the enactment of laws 

banning the possession of guns by categories of persons 

thought by a legislature to present a special danger of misuse.” 

Id. at 1901. And it again told us to focus our historical analysis 

on “a law-abiding citizen’s” right to bear arms. Id. at 1932 

(Thomas, J., dissenting) (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29). Thus, 

time and again, the Supreme Court has acknowledged that the 

deep roots of felon-possession bans in American history impart 

a presumption of lawfulness to § 922(g)(1).

14 Those background checks screen for both violent and nonviolent offenses. See, e.g., Wash. Rev. Code Ann. 

§ 9.41.070(1)(a); Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 18-12-203(1)(c); 

Kan. Stat. Ann. § 75-7c04(a)(2); Miss. Code. Ann. § 45-9-

101(2)(d); N.H. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 159:6(I)(a); N.C. Gen. Stat. 

Ann. § 14-415.12(b)(1).

15 District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 630, 634

(2008).

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As to methodology, Rahimi was also instructive, clarifying that “the appropriate analysis involves considering 

whether the challenged regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,” 144 S. Ct. at 

1898 (emphasis added), and that “if imprisonment was permissible” as a penalty for an offense at the Founding, “the lesser 

restriction” of disarmament imposed by a modern analogue “is 

also permissible,” id. at 1902. There, the Court derived the relevant principles from “two distinct legal regimes”—surety 

laws and going armed laws—“[t]aken together.” Id. at 1899, 

1901. Even though the regulation at issue, § 922(g)(8), was 

“by no means identical to these founding era regimes,” the 

Court emphasized that “it does not need to be,” id. 1901, because a regulation that “does not precisely match its historical 

precursors . . . ‘still may be analogous enough’” to withstand 

constitutional scrutiny. id. at 1898 (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 

30). Rather than seeking out a “dead ringer” or “historical 

twin,” we were instructed to determine whether the modernday regulation “comport[s] with the principles underlying the 

Second Amendment” by considering whether the challenged 

regulation is “‘relevantly similar’ to laws that our tradition is 

understood to permit.” Id. at 1898 (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 

29). 

B. Relevantly Similar Historical Analogues

When we go to compare “relevantly similar” laws, “not 

all history is created equal.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 34. Foundingera laws “surrounding the ratification of the text” are generally 

considered to be “the history that matters most,” Rahimi, 144 

S. Ct. at 1924 (Barrett, J., concurring), because Second 

Amendment rights “are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them,” Heller, 554 

U.S. at 634–35. But we also look to “English history dating 

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from the late 1600s, along with American colonial views leading up to the founding,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 20, because the 

right to keep and bear arms was a “pre-existing right,” id. 

(quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 592). In addition, post-enactment 

history and tradition “through the end of the 19th century” is a 

“critical tool” for determining the principles underlying the 

Second Amendment. Id. at 35 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. at 

605).16

Here, the Government identifies two sets of relevantly 

similar laws from which comparable principles can be derived: 

(1) laws that categorically disarmed entire classes of people, 

and (2) felony punishment laws. I address each below before 

16 The Supreme Court has approvingly cited and relied on postenactment sources in each of its recent Second Amendment 

cases. See Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1899–1901 (citing laws and 

tradition from the early nineteenth century); Bruen, 597 U.S. at 

50–57 & nn.15–24 (analyzing nineteenth-century laws and 

cases); McDonald, 561 U.S. at 778 (Alito, J.) (“[I]t is clear that 

the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment 

counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty.”); 

Heller, 554 U.S. at 605 (“We now address how the Second 

Amendment was interpreted from immediately after its ratification through the end of the 19th century.”); see also Rahimi, 

144 S. Ct. at 1915–16 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (“As the 

Framers made clear, and as th[e] Court has stated time and 

again for more than two centuries, post-ratification history . . .

can also be important for interpreting vague constitutional text 

and determining exceptions to individual constitutional 

rights.”); id. at 1924 (Barrett, J., concurring) (explaining that 

“postenactment history can be an important tool”).

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comparing the principles derived from these analogues to 

§ 922(g)(1).

1. Categorical Disarmament Laws

a. England’s Restoration and Glorious Revolution

During the late seventeenth century, the English 

government repeatedly disarmed individuals whose conduct 

indicated that they could not be trusted to abide by the 

sovereign and its dictates.

Following the tumult of the English Civil War, the 

restored Stuart monarchs disarmed nonconformist (i.e., nonAnglican) Protestants.17

 Of course, not all nonconformists 

were dangerous; to the contrary, many belonged to pacificist 

denominations like the Quakers.18 However, they refused to 

participate in the Church of England, an institution headed by 

the King as a matter of English law.19 And nonconformists 

17 See Joyce Lee Malcolm, To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right 45 (1994) (describing how 

Charles II “totally disarmed . . . religious dissenters”).

18 See Joyce Lee Malcolm, The Right of the People to Keep and 

Bear Arms: The Common Law Tradition, 10 Hastings Const. 

L.Q. 285, 304 n.117 (1983) (“Persons judged to be suspicious 

by the royal administration were those . . . who belonged to the 

Protestant sects that refused to remain within the Church of 

England. The Quakers were prominent sufferers.”).

19 See Church of England, BBC (June 30, 2011), 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/cofe/cofe_1.shtml (describing “the Act of Supremacy” enacted during the reign of Henry VIII).

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often refused to take mandatory oaths acknowledging the 

King’s sovereign authority over matters of religion.20 As a 

result, Anglicans accused nonconformists of believing their 

faith exempted them from obedience to the law.21

Protestants had their rights restored after the Glorious 

Revolution of 1688 replaced the Catholic King James II with 

William of Orange and Mary, James’s Protestant daughter.22 

But even then, Parliament enacted the English Bill of Rights, 

which declared: “Subjects which are Protestants, may have 

Arms for their Defence suitable to their Conditions, and as 

allowed by Law.”23 This “predecessor to our Second 

Amendment,” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 44 (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. 

at 593), reveals that the legislature—Parliament—had the 

authority to decide who was law-abiding enough to keep and 

bear arms.24

20 See Frederick B. Jonassen, “So Help Me?”: Religious Expression and Artifacts in the Oath of Office and the Courtroom 

Oath, 12 Cardozo Pub. L., Pol’y & Ethics J. 303, 322 (2014) 

(describing Charles II’s reinstation of the Oath of Supremacy); 

Caroline Robbins, Selden’s Pills: State Oaths in England, 

1558–1714, 35 Huntington Lib. Q. 303, 314–15 (1972) (discussing nonconformists’ refusal to take such oaths).

21 See Christopher Haigh, ‘Theological Wars’: ‘Socinians’ v. 

‘Antinomians’ in Restoration England, 67 J. Ecclesiastical 

Hist. 325, 326, 334 (2016).

22 See Alice Ristroph, The Second Amendment in a Carceral 

State, 116 Nw. U. L. Rev. 203, 228 (2021).

23 1 W. & M., Sess. 2, ch. 2, § 7 (Eng. 1689) (emphasis added).

24 Cf. Lois G. Schwoerer, To Hold and Bear Arms: The English 

Perspective, 76 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 27, 47–48 (2000) 

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In 1689, the pendulum of distrust swung the other way. 

Parliament enacted a statute prohibiting Catholics who refused 

to take an oath renouncing the tenets of their faith from owning 

firearms, except as necessary for self-defense.25 As with 

nonconformists, this prohibition was not based on the notion 

that every single Catholic was dangerous. Rather, the 

categorical argument English Protestants made against 

Catholicism at the time was that Catholics’ faith put the 

dictates of a “foreign power,” namely the Vatican, before 

English law.26 Accordingly, the disarmament of Catholics in 

1689 reflects Protestant fears that Catholics could not be 

trusted to obey the law.

That restriction could be lifted only prospectively and 

on an individual basis. That is, Parliament permitted Catholics 

who “repeated and subscribed” to the necessary oath before 

(explaining how the English Bill of Rights preserved Parliament’s authority to limit who could bear arms).

25 An Act for the Better Securing the Government by Disarming Papists and Reputed Papists, 1 W. & M., Sess. 1, ch. 15 

(Eng. 1689); see Malcolm, supra note 17, at 123.

26 See Diego Lucci, John Locke on Atheism, Catholicism, Antinomianism, and Deism, 20 Etica & Politica/Ethics & Pol. 

201, 228–29 (2018). Official Anglican doctrine—regularly 

preached throughout England—warned that the Pope taught 

“that they that are under him are free from all burdens and 

charges of the commonwealth, and obedience toward their 

prince.” An Exhortation Concerning Good Order, and Obedience to Rulers and Magistrates, in Sermons or Homilies Appointed to Be Read in Churches in the Time of Queen Elizabeth 

of Famous Memory 114, 125 (new ed., Gilbert & Rivington 

1839).

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“any two or more Justices of the Peace” to resume keeping 

arms.27 But, needless to say, disavowal of religious tenets 

hardly demonstrated that the swearing individual no longer had 

the capacity to commit violence; rather, the oath signified 

allegiance to the English government and an assurance of 

conformity to its laws. This status-based disarmament of 

Catholics evinces the “historical understanding”28 not only that 

legislatures could categorically disarm groups they viewed as 

unwilling to obey the law, but also that disarmed members had 

an opportunity to prospectively regain their right to bear arms.

b. Colonial America

The English notion that the government could disarm 

those not considered law-abiding traveled to the American 

colonies. Although some of the earliest firearm laws in 

colonial America forbid Native Americans and Black people 

from owning guns,29 the colonies also repeatedly disarmed 

27 1 W. & M., Sess. 1, ch. 15 (Eng. 1689).

28 Bruen, 597 U.S. at 26. That the same Parliament that enacted 

the predecessor to our Second Amendment also passed laws 

categorically disarming groups of people is particularly relevant to our historical inquiry. See William Baude & Robert 

Leider, The General-Law Right to Bear Arms, 99 Notre Dame 

L. Rev. 1467, 1472 (2024) (explaining that early American 

courts described the right to arms codified in “the English Bill 

of Rights, the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and 

various state constitutions as codifying the same preexisting 

right”).

29 See Clayton E. Cramer, Armed America: The Remarkable 

Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie 

31, 43 (2006). Today, we emphatically reject these bigoted and 

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full-fledged members of the political community as it then 

existed—i.e., free, Christian, white men—who the authorities 

believed could not be trusted to obey the law. Those 

restrictions are telling because they were imposed at a time 

before the advent of the English Bill of Rights, when the 

charters of Virginia and Massachusetts provided 

unprecedented protections for colonists’ firearm rights.30

The Virginia Company carried out one of the earliest 

recorded disarmaments in the American colonies in 1624. For 

his “opprobrious” and “base and detracting speeches 

concerning the Governor,” Richard Barnes was “disarmed” by 

the Virginia Council and “banished” from Jamestown.31 By 

disrespecting the colonial authorities, Barnes demonstrated 

that he could no longer be trusted as a law-abiding member of 

the community and thus forfeited his ability to keep arms. 

During the late 1630s, a Boston preacher named Anne 

Hutchinson challenged the Massachusetts Bay government’s 

authority over spiritual matters by advocating for direct, 

unconstitutional laws, as well as their premise that one’s race 

or religion correlates with disrespect for the law. I cite them 

here only to demonstrate the tradition of categorical, statusbased disarmaments. See Blocher & Ruben, supra note 1, at 

165 (urging courts examining historical disarmament laws that 

would violate the Constitution today to “ask[] why earlier generations disarmed certain groups of people, rather than asking 

only whom they disarmed”).

30 See Nicholas J. Johnson et al., Firearms Law and the Second 

Amendment: Regulation, Rights, and Policy 174 (3d ed. 2022).

31 David Thomas Konig, “Dale’s Laws” and the Non-Common 

Law Origins of Criminal Justice in Virginia, 26 Am. J. Legal 

Hist. 354, 371 (1982).

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personal relationships with the divine.32 Governor John 

Winthrop accused Hutchinson and her followers of being 

Antinomians—those who viewed their salvation as exempting 

them from the law—and banished her.33 The colonial 

government also disarmed at least fifty-eight of Hutchinson’s 

supporters, not because those supporters had shown a 

propensity for violence, but “to embarrass the offenders” who 

were forced to personally deliver their arms to the authorities 

in an act of public submission.34 The Massachusetts authorities 

therefore disarmed Hutchinson’s supporters to shame those 

colonists because the authorities concluded their conduct 

evinced a willingness to disobey the law.35

Again, however, restoration of the right to bear arms 

was available, but only prospectively, and only for individuals 

who affirmatively sought relief: Hutchinson’s followers who 

renounced her teachings and confessed their sins to the 

authorities “were welcomed back into the community and able 

32 See Edmund S. Morgan, The Case Against Anne Hutchinson, 

10 New Eng. Q. 635, 637–38, 644 (1937).

33 Id. at 648; Ann Fairfax Withington & Jack Schwartz, The 

Political Trial of Anne Hutchinson, 51 New Eng. Q. 226, 226 

(1978).

34 James F. Cooper, Jr., Anne Hutchinson and the “Lay Rebellion” Against the Clergy, 61 New Eng. Q. 381, 391 (1988).

35 Cf. John Felipe Acevedo, Dignity Takings in the Criminal 

Law of Seventeenth-Century England and the Massachusetts 

Bay Colony, 92 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 743, 761 (2017) (describing 

other shaming punishments used at the time, including scarlet 

letters).

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to retain their arms,” as they had shown that they could once 

again be trusted to abide by the law.36

Like the Stuart monarchs in England, the Anglican 

colony of Virginia disarmed nonconformist Protestants in the 

1640s due to their rejection of the King’s sovereign power over 

religion. When a group of nonconformist Puritans from 

Massachusetts resettled in southeastern Virginia, Governor 

William Berkeley “acted quickly” to head off any 

“[o]pposition to the king” by disarming them.37 And after the 

Glorious Revolution, the American colonies followed 

England’s example by disarming their Catholic residents.38

The colonies redoubled the disarmament of Catholics 

during the Seven Years’ War of 1756–1763 based on their 

perceived unwillingness to adhere to the King’s sovereign 

36 Joseph G.S. Greenlee, The Historical Justification for Prohibiting Dangerous Persons from Possessing Arms, 20 Wyo. 

L. Rev. 249, 263 (2020).

37 Kevin Butterfield, The Puritan Experiment in Virginia, 

1607–1650, at 21 (June 1999) (M.A. thesis, College of William 

and Mary) (on file with William and Mary Libraries); see 

Charles Campbell, History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia 211–12 (1860).

38 Just three years after designating Anglicanism as the colony’s official religion, see George J. Lankevich, New York 

City: A Short History 30 (2002), New York Governor Benjamin Fletcher disarmed Catholic colonists in 1696, see Shona 

Helen Johnston, Papists in a Protestant World: The Catholic 

Anglo-Atlantic in the Seventeenth Century 219–20 (May 11, 

2011) (Ph.D. dissertation, Georgetown University) (on file 

with the Georgetown University Library).

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dictates.39 Maryland, for example, though founded as a haven 

for persecuted English Catholics,40 confiscated Catholics’ 

firearms and ammunition during the war.41 Notably, that

decision was not in response to violence; indeed, the colony’s 

governor at the time observed that “the Papists behave 

themselves peaceably and as good subjects.”42 Neighboring 

Pennsylvania followed suit and took “all arms, military 

accoutrements, gunpowder and ammunition” from all 

Catholics and “reputed” Catholics.43 Virginia likewise 

prohibited Catholics and “suspected” Catholics from owning 

39 See Greenlee, supra note 36, at 263. Colonies disarmed 

other religious minorities during the Seven Years’ War, too. 

For instance, New Jersey confiscated firearms from Moravians, a group of nonconformist Protestants from modern-day 

Germany, because the governor deemed their nonconformist 

views sufficient evidence that they could not be trusted to obey 

authority. See Johnson et al., supra note 30, at 198.

40 See Michael W. McConnell, The Origins and Historical Understanding of Free Exercise of Religion, 103 Harv. L. Rev. 

1409, 1424 (1990).

41 See Acts of May 22, 1756, reprinted in 52 Archives of Maryland: Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly, February 1755 – October 1756, at 448–49, 454 (J. Hall Pleasants ed., 

1935) [hereinafter Md. Act of 1756]; Greenlee, supra note 36, 

at 263; Johnson et al., supra note 30, at 197.

42 Elihu S. Riley, A History of the General Assembly of Maryland 224 (1912) (quoting a July 9, 1755 letter from Governor 

Sharpe).

43 An Act for Forming and Regulating the Militia of the Province of Pennsylvania, reprinted in 5 The Statutes at Large of 

Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, at 627 (James T. Mitchell & 

Henry Flanders eds., 1898) [hereinafter Pa. Act of 1757].

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weapons or ammunition, declaring that it was “dangerous at 

this time to permit Papists to be armed.”44 

Again, these generalizations led to overinclusive bans. 

Not all Catholics posed a threat of misusing their firearms. 

That said, these laws reveal that legislatures had the authority 

to disarm every member of a group based on class-wide 

presumptions about law-abiding behavior. And under each 

regime, Catholics who violated the ban and were caught in 

possession of arms—whether or not they were dangerous—

were subject to severe penalties.

To account for this overbreadth, colonial governments 

provided individual Catholics with the opportunity to 

prospectively restore their armament rights by persuading a 

government official that they themselves were unlikely to 

misuse firearms. A Catholic in Virginia who “desire[d] to 

submit and conform” could “present himself before the justices 

of the peace,” and upon taking a loyalty oath “in open court,” 

would “thenceforth be discharged of and from all disabilities 

and forfeitures, which he might or should be liable to for the 

future.”45 Similarly, a Catholic in Maryland who persuaded a 

local justice of the peace that he was law-abiding and not 

dangerous could keep weapons necessary for the defense of his 

home.46 But Catholics under these regimes had to 

affirmatively regain their right to possess arms before violating 

44 An Act for Disarming Papists, and Reputed Papists, Refusing to Take the Oaths to the Government, reprinted in 7 The 

Statutes at Large; Being A Collection of All the Laws of Virginia 35–38 (William W. Hening ed., 1820) [hereinafter Va. 

Act of 1756].

45 Id. at 38 (emphasis added).

46 Md. Act of 1756, supra note 41, at 448. 

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the disarmament law. Those discovered possessing firearms 

without first lifting their firearm disability would be arrested, 

imprisoned without bail, forced to forfeit all their weapons, and 

subjected to onerous fines.47 In short, the restoration of 

armament rights during the Colonial era occurred through preenforcement actions, which provided prospective relief to lawabiding challengers who complied with the disarmament law 

and demonstrated that they did not pose a risk of misusing 

arms.

c. Revolutionary War

As the colonies became independent states, legislatures 

continued to disarm individuals whose status indicated that 

they could not be trusted to obey the law. John Locke—a 

philosopher who profoundly influenced the American 

revolutionaries48—argued that the replacement of individual 

judgments of what behavior is acceptable with communal 

47 Id. (proclaiming that a Catholic who violated the disarmament law “shall forfeit and lose . . . his Heirs and Successors, 

his and their said Armour, Gunpowder, and Ammunition; and 

shall also be imprisoned”); see also Va. Act of 1757, supra 

note 44, at 37 (punishing non-oath taking Catholics with forfeiture of all their arms and ammunition, imprisonment without 

bail, and fines); Pa. Act of 1757, supra note 43, at 627 (imposing forfeiture and imprisonment without bail).

48 See Thad W. Tate, The Social Contract in America, 1774–

1787: Revolutionary Theory as a Conservative Instrument, 22 

Wm. & Mary Q. 375, 376 (1965); see also Gundy v. United 

States, 588 U.S. 128, 153 (2019) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting) (observing “John Locke [was] one of the thinkers who most influenced the framers[]”).

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norms is an essential characteristic of the social contract.49 

Members of a social compact, he explained, therefore have a 

civic obligation to comply with communal judgments 

regarding proper behavior.50

Drawing on Locke, state legislatures conditioned their 

citizens’ ability to keep arms on compliance with that civic 

obligation, and several states enacted statutes disarming all 

those who refused to recognize the sovereignty of the new 

nation.51 In Connecticut, for instance, as tensions with England 

rose, concerns that loyalists could not be trusted to uphold their 

civic duties as members of a new state culminated in a 1775 

statute that forbid anyone who defamed resolutions of the 

Continental Congress from keeping arms, voting, or serving as 

a public official.52

49 See John Locke, Two Treatises of Government § 163 

(Thomas I. Cook ed., Hafner Press 1947) (reasoning “there 

only is political society where every one of the members hath 

quitted his natural power [to judge transgressions and] resigned 

it up into the hands of the community”).

50 Locke grounded that duty in the consent of those within a 

political society; however, he argued that mere presence in a 

territory constitutes tacit consent to the laws of the reigning 

sovereign. See id. § 119.

51 See Robert H. Churchill, Gun Regulation, the Police Power, 

and the Right to Keep Arms in Early America: The Legal Context of the Second Amendment, 25 Law & Hist. Rev. 139, 158 

(2007).

52 G.A. Gilbert, The Connecticut Loyalists, 4 Am. Hist. Rev. 

273, 282 (1899) (describing this resolution as “a fair sample of 

most of the others passed at this time”).

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In 1776, most of the states heeded the Continental 

Congress’s call to disarm those who “are notoriously 

disaffected to the cause of America, or who have not 

associated, and shall refuse to associate, to defend, by arms, 

the[] United Colonies, against the hostile attempts of the 

British fleets and armies,”53 by disarming those who did not 

take a loyalty oath or were suspected of being disloyal.54 

53 4 Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774–1789, at 205 

(Worthington C. Ford ed., 1906).

54 See United States v. Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120, 1126–27 (8th 

Cir. 2024); see, e.g., Act of May 1, 1776, ch. 21, §§ 1–2, reprinted in 5 Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, of the Province of Massachusetts Bay 479–80 (1886) (requiring every 

non-Quaker “male person above sixteen years of age” to take 

an oath of loyalty and disarming those who refused of “all such 

arms, ammunition and warlike implements, as, by the strictest 

search, can be found in his possession or belonging to him”)

[hereinafter Mass. Act of 1776]; Act of 1776, reprinted in 7 

Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in New England 566–67 (John R. Bartlett ed., 1862)

(disarming every male above sixteen years of age who refused 

to take an oath of loyalty without providing “satisfactory reasons” for their refusal) [hereinafter R.I. Act of 1776]; Act of 

May 5, 1777, ch. 3, reprinted in 9 The Statutes at Large; Being 

a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia 281–82 (William W. 

Hening ed., 1821) (disarming “all free born male inhabitants of 

this state, above the age of sixteen years, except imported servants during the time of their service” who refused to swear their 

“allegiance” to the state) [hereinafter Va. Act of 1777]; Act of 

Nov. 15, 1777, ch. 6, § 9, 1777 N.C. Sess. Laws 231–32 (declaring that “all persons failing or refusing to take the oath of 

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George Washington approved of these disarmament laws and 

stated that “the other colonies ought to adopt similar” 

measures.55

Pennsylvania in particular passed a flurry of laws 

disarming entire groups whose status suggested they could not 

be trusted to follow the law. In 1776, Pennsylvania ordered the 

blanket disarmament of all “non-associators,” regardless of 

whether they were disaffected to the cause of liberty.56 The 

allegiance” that were not exiled “shall not keep guns or other 

arms within his or their House” and that any such weapons 

“may be seized by a written Order of a justice of the county”) 

[hereinafter N.C. Act of 1777]; Resolution of Mar. 13, 1776,

in Journal of the Provincial Congress of South Carolina, 1776, 

at 77–78 (1776) (disarming convicted non-associators unless 

and until they took a loyalty oath) [hereinafter S.C. Res. of 

1776]; Act of Sept. 20, 1777, ch. 40, § 20, in Acts of the General Assembly of the State of New-Jersey 90 (1777) (directing 

the Council of Safety to “deprive and take from such Persons 

as they shall judge disaffected and dangerous to the present 

Government, all the Arms, Accoutrements and Ammunition 

which they own or possess”).

55 Letter from George Washington to Governor Cooke (Jan. 6, 

1776), in 3 The Writings of George Washington 323 

(Worthington C. Ford ed., 1889).

56 Act of July 19, 1776, reprinted in 9 The Statutes at Large of 

Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, at 11 (James T. Mitchell & 

Henry Flanders eds., 1903) (ordering local officials to “take all 

the arms . . . which are in the hands of non-associators in the 

most expeditious and effectual manner”); Churchill, supra note 

51, at 160 n.52 (“Pennsylvania ordered the blanket 

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following year, it gave all adult males an ultimatum—swear a 

loyalty oath or “be disarmed” by local authorities.57 In 1778, 

Pennsylvania amended the act to require all adult males who 

refused or neglected to take an oath to “deliver up [their] arms” 

to the state.58 Those who failed to comply and were caught 

“carry[ing] . . . or keep[ing] any arms or ammunition in [their] 

house or elsewhere” faced forfeiture of their arms and 

disarmament which “continue[d] for and during the life of the

. . . offender.”59 Finally, in 1779, it authorized local officials 

to disarm “any person” they “suspected to be disaffected to the 

independence of this state.”60

These statutes are especially illuminating because 

Pennsylvania’s 1776 constitution strongly protected the 

disarmament of non-associators, dropping its [ ] distinction between the disaffected and well affected.”).

57 Act of June 13, 1777, reprinted in 9 The Statutes at Large of 

Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, at 110–13 (James T. Mitchell 

& Henry Flanders eds., 1903) [hereinafter Pa. Act of 1777].

58 Act of Apr. 1, 1778, reprinted in 9 The Statutes at Large of 

Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, at 238–39, 242 (James T. 

Mitchell & Henry Flanders eds., 1903) [hereinafter Pa. Act of 

1778].

59 Id. at 242–43; see also Joseph Blocher & Caitlan Carberry, 

Historical Gun Laws Targeting “Dangerous” Groups and 

Outsiders, (manuscript at 9), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3702696 (explaining that “Pennsylvania 

amended the act” in 1778 to make disarmament permanent).

60 Act of Mar. 31, 1779, reprinted in 9 The Statutes at Large of 

Pennsylvania from 1682 to 1801, at 347–48 (James T. Mitchell 

& Henry Flanders eds., 1903).

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people’s right to bear arms.61 See Heller, 554 U.S. at 600–01 

(relying on Pennsylvania’s “analogous arm-bearing right[]” to 

“confirm[]” its interpretation of the Second Amendment); 

Williams, 113 F.4th at 654 n.11 (“As of 1776, the Pennsylvania 

Constitution protected the right to keep and bear arms, so preFounding examples from that state are highly probative of the 

federal right’s scope.”). Nonetheless, Pennsylvania deprived 

sizable numbers of pacifists of that right, including Quakers, 

Moravians, Mennonites, and other groups whose religious 

convictions prohibited oath-taking.62 Those groups were not 

disarmed because they were dangerous,63 but because their 

refusal to swear allegiance demonstrated an unwillingness to 

submit to communal judgments embodied in law when they 

conflicted with personal conviction and thus posed a special 

61 PA. Const. of 1776, Decl. of Rights, art. XIII (“That the people have a right to bear arms for the defence of themselves and 

the state.”); C. Kevin Marshall, Why Can’t Martha Stewart 

Have a Gun?, 32 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 695, 724 (2009).

62 See Jim Wedeking, Quaker State: Pennsylvania’s Guide to 

Reducing the Friction for Religious Outsiders Under the Establishment Clause, 2 N.Y.U. J.L. & Liberty 28, 51 (2006); see 

also Thomas C. McHugh, Moravian Opposition to the Pennsylvania Test Acts, 1777 to 1789, at 49–50 (Sept. 7, 1965) 

(M.A. thesis, Lehigh University) (on file with the Lehigh Preserve Institutional Repository).

63 See Heller, 554 U.S. at 590 (“Quakers opposed the use of 

arms not just for militia service, but for any violent purpose 

whatsoever . . . .”); Johnson et al., supra note 30, at 301 (noting 

that states disarmed “Quakers and other pacifists; although 

they were not fighters, they did own guns for hunting”).

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risk of danger.64 Only those who affirmatively established that 

they were indeed law-abiding by swearing a loyalty oath before 

state authorities had their firearm rights prospectively 

restored.65 

These class-wide disarmament statutes from the 

Revolutionary War era shared three characteristics with the 

group-based disarmament laws of the past. First, Revolutionera legislatures categorically disarmed entire groups of people 

believed to be dangerous, likely to misuse firearms, or inclined 

to behave unlawfully. These broad generalizations inevitably 

led to under- and over-inclusive regulatory schemes. 

Pennsylvania’s loyalty oath, for example, failed to ferret out 

Benedict Arnold’s treachery66 while simultaneously 

precluding many peaceful and non-dangerous people from 

possessing arms.

Second, individuals disarmed by these revolutionaryperiod statutes could prospectively regain their rights by 

proving to a government official that they no longer posed a 

danger of misusing firearms. In Connecticut, persons reported 

as “inimical” to the revolutionary cause were “disarmed and 

not allowed to have or keep any arms,” but only until they 

persuaded the local “civil authority, selectmen, and committees

of inspection” that they were “friendly to this and the other 

64 See Wedeking, supra note 62, at 51–52 (describing how 

Quakers were “penal[ized] for allegiance to their religious 

scruples over the new government”).

65 Pa. Act of 1777, supra note 57, at 111–13.

66 See United States v. Jackson, 85 F.4th 468, 476 (8th Cir. 

2023) (Stras, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en 

banc).

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United Colonies.”67 Suspected non-associators in South 

Carolina who successfully “convince[d]” the committee on 

safety that they “sincerely desire[d] to join in support of the 

American cause” would have their “arms . . . restored.”68 Nonassociators in Massachusetts could have their right to bear arms 

restored by “order of” the “general court” or “committees of 

correspondence, inspection or safety.”

69 Males older than 

sixteen in New Hampshire could retain their arms despite 

failing to take a loyalty oath if they provided the legislature 

with “satisfactory reasons” for their refusal,70 while males in 

Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina who were initially 

disarmed for refusing to take a loyalty oath could regain their 

right to bear arms by affirmatively seeking out a justice of the 

peace and taking a loyalty oath, thereby proving that they were 

no longer dangerous, disloyal, or untrustworthy.71

Third, the burden was on members of a disarmed class 

to rebut the class-wide presumption of firearm misuse before 

possessing a firearm, and those who violated disarmament laws 

without first satisfying the steps to lift their disability 

prospectively faced serious consequences. For example, a 

disaffected South Carolinian who was “found in possession of 

67 Act of Dec. 1775, reprinted in 15 The Public Records of the 

Colony of Connecticut From May, 1775 to June 1776, at 193 

(Charles J. Hoadly ed., 1890) [hereinafter Conn. Act of 1775].

68 S.C. Res. of 1776, supra note 54, at 78.

69 Mass. Act of 1776, supra note 54, at 484; see Churchill, supra note 51, at 159. 

70 R.I. Act of 1776, supra note 54, at 567.

71 See Va. Act of 1777, supra note 54, at 282–83; N.C. Act of 

1777, supra note 54, at 231–32; Pa. Act of 1777, supra note 

57, at 112–13.

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arms or ammunition” without first having his rights restored by 

a legislative committee would “again be disarmed” and, this 

time, also imprisoned.72 And statutorily disarmed males in 

Pennsylvania who were caught in possession before having 

taken a loyalty oath before a justice of the peace were 

imprisoned, “prosecute[d],” required to “forfeit [their] arms 

and ammunition to the state,” fined “double the value” of their 

forfeited possessions, and disarmed for “life.”

73

d. Ratification Debates

It is apparent from the debates around ratification that 

the Founders believed the Second Amendment permitted 

legislatures to disarm serious criminals.

The debates between the Federalists and AntiFederalists in Pennsylvania “were among the most influential 

and widely distributed of any essays published during 

ratification.”74 Those essays included “The Dissent of the 

Minority,” a statement of the Anti-Federalist delegates’ 

views75 that proved “highly influential” for the Second 

72 S.C. Res. of 1776, supra note 54, at 78.

73 Pa. Act of 1778, supra note 58, at 242–43 (declaring that “all 

disabilities and incapacities which any person . . . shall incur 

or be liable to by reason of [the disarmament acts] shall be and 

continue for and during the life of the delinquent or offender”).

74 Saul Cornell, Commonplace or Anachronism: The Standard 

Model, the Second Amendment, and the Problem of History in 

Contemporary Constitutional Theory, 16 Const. Comment. 

221, 227 (1999).

75 See id. at 232–33.

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Amendment.76 Heller, 554 U.S. at 604. The Dissent of the 

Minority proposed an amendment stating:

[T]he people have a right to bear 

arms for the defence of themselves 

and their own State or the United 

States, or for the purpose of killing 

game; and no law shall be passed 

for disarming the people or any of 

them unless for crimes committed, 

or real danger of public injury from 

individuals.77

And, at the Massachusetts convention, Samuel Adams, a 

prominent Anti-Federalist, proposed an amendment that the 

Constitution shall “never [be] construed . . . to prevent the 

people . . . who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own 

arms.”78 “Given the Anti-Federalists’ vehement opposition” to 

76 See also Amul R. Thapar & Joe Masterman, Fidelity and 

Construction, 129 Yale L.J. 774, 797 (2020) (“Although one 

might question why we should listen to the debate’s ‘losers,’ 

the Anti-Federalist Papers are relevant for the same reason that 

the Federalist Papers are: to quote Justice Scalia, ‘their writings, like those of other intelligent and informed people of the 

time, display how the text of the Constitution was originally 

understood.’ Plus, the Anti-Federalists did not exactly ‘lose,’ 

in the same way in which a party who settles a case but gets 

important concessions does not ‘lose’ the case.” (quoting Antonin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and 

the Law 38 (Amy Gutmann ed., 1997))).

77 2 Bernard Schwartz, The Bill of Rights: A Documentary History 665 (1971) (emphasis added).

78 Id. at 675, 681 (emphasis added).

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federal power, it is particularly “revealing” that even they 

understood that government could disarm criminals and 

dangerous people. Adoptive Couple v. Baby Girl, 570 U.S. 

637, 664 (2013) (Thomas, J., concurring).

While these amendments were not adopted,79 they 

“reveal a great deal about the Second Amendment.” Williams, 

113 F.4th at 655; see Heller, 554 U.S. at 604 (relying on the 

“minority proposal in Pennsylvania” and “Samuel Adams’ 

proposal”). The Second Amendment codified a “pre-existing,” 

“venerable,” and “widely understood” right, making it unlikely 

that “different people of the founding period had vastly 

different conceptions” of its scope. Heller, 554 U.S. at 603–

05. The Anti-Federalist proposals thus reflect the 

understanding of the Founding generation—particularly 

among those who favored enshrining the right to bear arms in 

the Constitution—that “crimes committed,” whether 

dangerous or not, justified disarmament.80

79 The Federalists, who considered a bill of rights unnecessary, 

defeated the Pennsylvania proposal, while the Massachusetts 

ratifying convention rejected Adams’s proposal because he had 

waited until the morning of ratification to present it. See Letter 

from Jeremy Belknap to Ebenezer Hazard (Feb. 10, 1788), in

7 Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution

1583 (John P. Kaminski et al. eds., 2001).

80 See Stephen P. Halbrook, The Founders’ Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms 273 (2008) (explaining that the Founders “did not object to the lack of an explicit 

exclusion of criminals from the individual right to keep and 

bear arms” during the debates over “what became the Second 

Amendment,” because this limitation “was understood”); Don

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e. Post-Ratification Tradition

The historical tradition of legislatures disarming 

categories of people whom they considered unfit to possess 

firearms continued into the nineteenth century.81 As the 

concerns from the Revolutionary War faded into the past, so 

did the disarmament laws targeting perceived disloyal 

Americans. But the pernicious tradition of prohibiting slaves 

and Native Americans from possessing firearms persisted,82 

and as worries of slave uprisings grew, many citizens feared 

that freedmen were untrustworthy or inclined to misuse 

firearms. See Williams, 113 F.4th at 656. Antebellum era 

B. Kates, Jr., Handgun Prohibition and the Original Meaning 

of the Second Amendment, 82 Mich. L. Rev. 204, 266 (1983) 

(“Nor does it seem that the Founders considered felons within 

the common law right to arms or intended to confer any such 

right upon them. All the ratifying convention proposals which 

most explicitly detailed the recommended right-to-arms 

amendment excluded criminals and the violent”).

81 As Rahimi makes clear, post-ratification history, at least 

when it is consistent with Founding-era history, is highly probative of the Second Amendment’s meaning. See supra note 

16.

82 Act of 1797, ch. 43 § 6, in 1 Laws of the State of Delaware

104 (1797); Act of 1798, reprinted in 2 The Statute Law of 

Kentucky 113 (William Littell ed., 1810); 1804 Ind. Acts 108, 

§ 4; Act of Mar. 6, 1805, reprinted in A Digest of the Laws of 

the State of Alabama 627 (Harry Toulmin ed., 1823); Act of 

June 7, 1806, reprinted in 1 A New Digest of the Statute Laws 

of the State of Louisiana 50 (Henry A. Bullard & Thomas 

Curry eds., 1842); 1805 Miss. Laws 90, § 4.

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legislatures responded with a familiar tactic—disarming 

freedmen on a class-wide basis.83

Like the earlier categorical bans, these statutes 

unquestionably swept in many peaceable, trustworthy, and 

law-abiding Americans who posed no danger of misusing their 

firearms. A few were absolute,

84 but nearly all of these laws 

allowed a freedman to make an individualized showing that he 

was not apt to misuse firearms, and, if successful, to receive a 

certificate or a license restoring his right to possess arms.85

83 See, e.g., infra notes 84–91.

84 See, e.g., Act of Feb. 17, 1833, reprinted in Compilation of 

the Public Acts of the Legislative Council of the Territory of 

Florida, Passed Prior to 1840, at 65 (John P. Duval ed., 1839); 

1850 Ky. Acts 296, § 12; Del. Laws 332, § 7 (1863).

85 See, e.g., Act of Dec. 1792, reprinted in 1 Collection of All 

Such Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia 187 (1803) (declaring that no freedman “shall keep or carry any gun . . . or 

other weapon whatsoever,” but “permit[ing them] to keep and 

use guns, powder, shot, and weapons offensive or defensive, 

by license from a Justice of Peace of the County”); Act of Oct. 

1, 1804, §§ 4–5, reprinted in Laws of Arkansas Territory 521 

(J. Steele & J. M’Campbell, eds., 1835) (same); Act of Oct. 1, 

1804, §§ 4–5, in Laws for the Government of the District of 

Louisiana 108 (1804) (same); Act of Oct. 1, 1804, §§ 4–5, reprinted in Digest of the Laws of the Missouri Territory 374 

(Henry Geyer ed., 1818) (same); Little Rock City Ordinance, 

in Arkansas Gazette, Jan. 12, 1836, at 1 (allowing any freedman “to keep one gun and ammunition therefor, by obtaining 

a license for that purpose from the City Court, which license 

may be granted upon giving bond and security for good behavior”).

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Delaware, for example, made it unlawful for a freedman to 

“have, own, keep or possess any gun, pistol, sword or any 

warlike instruments whatsoever.”86 But a freedman could seek

the resumption of that right by submitting an application to the 

local justice of the peace, and if “five or more respectable and 

judicious citizens” certified that the freedman was a “person of 

fair character,” the justice of the peace could “issue a license” 

authorizing the freedman to “keep or possess” a gun.87 In 

Florida, a local judge could grant a freedman’s application if 

“two respectable citizens of the county [certified] to the 

peaceful and orderly character of the applicant.”88 And a 

freedman in Maryland could possess a firearm if “at the time 

of his” possession, he had “a certificate from a justice of the 

peace, that he is an orderly and peaceable person.”89

Also consistent with the prior categorical disarmament 

laws, restoration under these Antebellum regimes was always 

prospective, and freedmen had to demonstrate that they did not 

fit the class-wide generalization of misusing firearms before 

possessing a firearm in violation of a disarmament statute.90 If 

86 Del. Laws 180–81, § 1 (1832).

87 Id. 

88 1865 Fla. Laws 25, § 12.

89 1806 Md. Laws 44–45, § 2.

90 See 1805 Va. Acts 51, §§ 1–3 (prohibiting freedmen from 

“keep[ing] or car[rying] any firelock of any kind, any military 

weapon, or any powder or lead, without first obtaining a license” from the court); 1806 Md. Laws 44–45, § 2 (prohibiting 

a freedman from “carrying a gun” unless “at the time of his 

carrying the same, [he has] a certificate from a justice of the 

peace, that he is an orderly and peaceable person”); 1837 Ark. 

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a freedman was caught possessing a firearm without first 

having his disability lifted by an executive or judicial officer, 

he would be arrested, imprisoned, fined, and forced to forfeit 

all his arms and ammunition.91 In short, restoration was limited 

to pre-enforcement actions brought by law-abiding freedmen.

Acts 587, § 17 (“No free[dman] shall be [allowed] to keep or 

carry any gun or rifle, or weapon of any kind, or any ammunition without a license first had and obtained, for that purpose, 

from some justice of the peace.”); 1854–55 Mo. Laws 1094, § 

2 (prohibiting a freedman from “keep[ing] or carry[ing] any 

firelock, or weapon of any kind, or any ammunition, without a 

license first had and obtained for the purpose, from a justice of 

the peace”); 1840–41 N.C. Sess. Laws 61–62 (“[I]f any . . . free 

Person of colour shall wear or carry about his or her person, or 

keep in his or her house, any Shot-gun, Musket, Rifle, Pistol, 

Sword, Dagger or Bowie-knife, unless he or she shall have obtained a license therefor from the Court of Pleas and Quarter 

Sessions of his or her County, within one year preceding the 

wearing, keeping or carrying thereof, he or she shall be guilty 

of a misdemeanor, and may be indicted therefor.”).

91 1805 Va. Acts 51, §§ 1–3 (ordering “every constable to give 

information against, and prosecute every free[dman] who shall 

keep or carry any arms or ammunition . . . without first obtaining a license” and requiring a convicted freedman to “forfeit 

all such arms and ammunition” upon conviction); 1806 Md. 

Laws 44–45, § 2 (requiring a freedman to who was caught “carrying” arms without a “certificate from a justice of the peace” 

to “forfeit” his arms and pay a fine); Del. Laws 181, § 2 (1832)

(authorizing justices of the peace to arrest and punish any 

freedman found “in possession of any Gun without a license or 

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36

With the enactment of the Fourteenth Amendment, 

religion- and race-based disarmament laws became a sordid 

relic of our Nation’s past.92 Still, the tradition of disarming 

permit”); 1837 Ark. Acts 587, § 18 (punishing every freedman 

caught possessing “weapon[s] of any kind” without “having a 

license” with “seizure” of his arms and large fines); 1854–55 

Mo. Laws 1094, § 3 (same); 1865 Fla. Laws 25, §§ 12–13 (declaring that “any . . . person of color” who possesses “fire-arms 

or ammunition of any kind” without “first obtain[ing] a license 

to do so . . . shall be deemed to be guilty of a misdemeanor, 

and . . . shall forfeit . . . all such fire-arms and ammunition, and

. . . be sentenced” to other punishments); see also 1840–41

N.C. Sess. Laws 61–62.

92 Although many of these laws are repugnant and would be 

unconstitutional today under the 14th Amendment, Rahimi instructs us to determine whether § 922(g)(1) “comport[s] with 

the principles underlying the Second Amendment.” 144 S. Ct. 

at 1898 (emphasis added). Like the Sixth Circuit in Williams 

and the Eighth Circuit in Jackson, we reference these bans only 

to demonstrate the tradition of legislatures disarming people 

they presumed posed a special risk of danger to the public. See 

Jackson, 110 F.4th at 1127 (“While some of these categorical 

prohibitions of course would be impermissible today under 

other constitutional provisions, they are relevant here in determining the historical understanding of the right to keep and 

bear arms.”); United States v. Williams, 113 F.4th 637, 656–57

(6th Cir. 2024) (“Classifying people as dangerous simply because of their race or religion was wrong from the beginning 

and unconstitutional from 1868. Nevertheless, these pre-Fourteenth Amendment laws provide insight into how early Americans conceived of the right to bear arms embodied in the 

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categories of persons thought by legislatures to present a 

“special danger of [firearm] misuse,” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 

1901, continued into the Reconstruction Era and the Gilded 

Age. Most states restricted the sale of firearms to, or the 

possession of firearms by, persons under the age of eighteen or 

twenty-one.93 Over a dozen states disarmed vagrants, often 

referred to as “tramps.”94 Many states prohibited drunks from 

purchasing or carrying guns.95 And several states banned the 

sale of arms to mentally ill persons.96 

Although the “who,” “how,” and “why,” Rahimi, 144 S. 

Ct. at 1898, underlying these categorical disarmament laws 

somewhat differed from their historical counterparts, “19thcentury courts and commentators,” Heller, 554 U.S. at 603, 

viewed these laws as constitutional. A “massively popular” 

nineteenth-century treatise written by “the most famous” voice 

on the Second Amendment at the time, Heller, 554 U.S. at 616, 

explained that some groups were “almost universally 

excluded” from exercising certain civic rights, including “the 

idiot, the lunatic, and the felon, on obvious grounds,” and that 

states “may prohibit the sale of arms to minors.”97 

These laws, like those of earlier decades, were 

unquestionably overbroad. Not every freedman, drunk, 

Second Amendment. The key point is that entire groups could 

be presumptively disarmed.”).

93 Brief of the United States at 24 & n.16, United States v. 

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 1889 (2024) (No. 22-915).

94 Id. at 25 & n.18.

95 Id. at 25–26 & n.19.

96 Id. at 24–25 & n.17.

97 Thomas, M. Cooley, Treatise on Constitutional Limitations

41, 739 n.4 (5th ed. 1883). 

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beggar, minor, or mentally ill person had a propensity to 

misuse firearms. To the contrary, many members of these 

disarmed classes likely posed no greater danger of firearm 

misuse than their fellow citizens who retained their armament 

rights. Yet state high courts routinely upheld these categorical 

disarmaments as consistent with theirstate constitutional rights

to bear arms,98 which were understood to be coextensive with 

the Second Amendment.99 For example, despite observing that 

some tramps were “less . . .vicious than others,” the Ohio 

Supreme Court nonetheless found a state law categorically 

disarming “tramps” consistent with the state constitutional 

right to keep and bear arms because the right “was never 

intended as a warrant for vicious persons to carry weapons with 

which to terrorize others.” State v. Hogan, 58 N.E. 572, 575 

(Ohio 1900).

In sum, these post-ratification laws, like the colonial 

ones preceding them, show that legislatures were empowered 

to disarm entire groups based on prevailing judgments about 

which categories of people posed “a special danger of 

98 See, e.g., State v. Shelby, 2 S.W. 468, 469 (Mo. 1886) (upholding a ban on carrying arms while intoxicated as a “reasonable regulation” that prevented the “mischief to be apprehended from an intoxicated person going abroad with firearms”); State v. Callicutt, 69 Tenn. 714, 716–17 (1878) (concluded that a state law “prevent[ing] the sale, gift, or loan of a 

pistol or other like dangerous weapon to a minor [was] not only 

constitutional as tending to prevent crime but wise and salutary 

in all its provisions”).

99 See Baude & Leider, supra note 28, at 1472 (“[I]n the context 

of the right to bear arms, courts treated . . . state and federal 

constitutional provisions as approximately equivalent.”).

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misu[ing]” firearms. Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1901. Although the 

targeted groups changed over time, as did the legislatures’ 

precise calculus for disarming them, the three features of those 

colonial-era laws remained constant. First, every categorical 

disarmament law was overbroad—sweeping in law-abiding 

people who were not dangerous, violent, untrustworthy, or 

unstable—yet they comported with the Second Amendment. 

Second, these laws almost universally provided some 

mechanism for members of a disarmed class to prospectively 

lift their disability by persuading an executive or judicial 

official that the class-wide presumption of likely firearm 

misuse did not apply to them. Third, if a member of a disarmed 

class violated these disarmament laws without first 

affirmatively lifting the disability, he was penalized 

accordingly. Thus, prospective relief was limited to those who 

abided by the ban unless and until demonstrating that they no 

longer (if ever) presented a special danger to others.

2. Criminal Punishment

Rahimi teaches that if a greater deprivation of rights was 

permissible as a penalty for an offense in the relevant past, the 

“lesser restriction” of disarmament is also permissible in a 

modern-day regulation. See 144 S. Ct. at 1902. With that precept in mind, the numerous historical laws punishing non-violent, as well as violent, felons with death, life imprisonment, 

estate forfeiture, and permanent loss of certain other civil rights 

show that an indefinite deprivation of the right to bear arms is 

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a permissible consequence of a felony conviction within our 

historical tradition.

a. English Law and Colonial America

In eighteenth-century England, the standard penalty for 

a felony—even for non-violent felonies like fraud and 

forgery—was death and forfeiture of land, goods, and chattels, 

and executed felons traditionally forfeited all their firearms, as 

well as the rest of their estate, to the government.100 That 

practice persisted in the American colonies and the Early 

Republic—those who committed serious felonies, both violent 

and non-violent, were executed and subject to permanent estate 

forfeiture.101 

Individuals who committed less serious crimes also lost 

their firearms on a temporary, if not permanent, basis. Virginia 

punished a person convicted for “base” and “opprobrious” 

speech by ordering him “disarmed” and declaring him 

ineligible to exercise “any priviledge or freedom” in the 

colony.102 The Massachusetts Bay Colony disarmed 

individuals for merely supporting someone who was convicted 

100 See 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of 

England 54, 97–98, 389 (1769); id. at 155, 162 (listing fraudulent bankruptcy and forging a marriage license as such felonies). 

101 See Bucklew v. Precythe, 587 U.S. 119, 129 (2019) 

(“[D]eath was ‘the standard penalty for all serious crimes’ at 

the time of the founding.”) (quoting Stuart Banner, The Death 

Penalty: An American History 23 (2002)); Baze v. Rees, 553 

U.S. 35, 94 (2008) (Thomas, J., concurring).

102 Konig, supra note 31, at 371.

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of a crime.103 One New York law “disarmed” anyone who was 

“convicted” of “oppos[ing] or deny[ing]” colonial or local 

authority, or “dissuad[ing]” others “from obeying the 

recommendations” of the Continental or colonial Congress,104

while another punished those who counterfeited state bills of 

credit with life imprisonment and the forfeiture of their entire 

estate, including firearms.105 South Carolina “disarmed” 

persons “upon due conviction” of “opposing the measures of 

the Continental or Colony Congress.”106 In Hampshire 

County, Massachusetts, “all persons . . . convicted of being 

notoriously inimical to the cause of American Liberty” were 

“disarmed.”107 And in Connecticut, anyone “duly convicted” 

of “libel[ing] or defam[ing]” any acts of the Continental 

Congress or the Connecticut General Assembly was “disarmed 

and not allowed to have or keep any arms.”108

Alternatively, where legislatures stipulated that certain 

offenses were not punishable by death or life imprisonment, 

103 See supra notes 32–36 and accompanying text (explaining 

how supporters of Anne Hutchinson, who was convicted for 

criticizing the colony’s clergy’s legalistic interpretation of the 

Bible, were disarmed).

104 Resolutions of Sept. 1, 1775, reprinted in 1 Journals of the 

Provincial Congress, Provincial Convention, Committee of 

Safety and Council of the State New-York 132 (1842).

105 Act of Apr. 18, 1786, reprinted in 2 Laws of the State of 

New York Passed at the Sessions of the Legislature 1785–1788, 

at 253, 260–61 (1886) [hereinafter N.Y. Act of 1786].

106 S.C. Res. of 1776, supra note 54, at 77.

107 Resolution of July 25–26, 1776, in 1 American Archives: 

Fifth Series 588 (Peter Force ed., 1848)

108 Conn. Act of 1775, supra note 67, at 193. 

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but rather forfeiture,109 the offender was stripped of his thenexisting estate, including any firearms,110 and only upon 

successfully serving of his sentence and reintegrating into 

society could he presumably repurchase arms.111 Even minor 

infractions were often punished with the seizure of firearms 

involved in the offense.112

Of particular relevance are the Founding-era felonies 

most similar to Range’s crime of defrauding the government—

forgery, counterfeiting, fraud, and theft—which, in many 

109 See Moore, 111 F.4th at 270–72 (collecting historical forfeiture laws).

110 See, e.g., Act of Apr. 5, 1790, reprinted in 13 Statutes at 

Large of Pennsylvania 511, 511–12 (James T. Mitchell & 

Henry Flanders eds., 1908) (providing for “forfeit[ure of] all 

. . . goods and chattels . . . possessed at the time the crime was 

committed and at any time afterwards”).

111 As this Court has recognized, “the early American forfeiture 

laws . . . yield the principle that a convict may be disarmed 

while he completes his sentence and reintegrates into society.” 

Moore, 111 F.4th at 272. 

112 For example, individuals who hunted in certain prohibited 

areas had to forfeit any weapons used in the course of that violation. See, e.g., Ordinance of Oct. 9, 1652, reprinted in Laws 

and Ordinances of New Netherland 1638–1674, at 138 (E.B. 

O’Callaghan ed., 1868); Act of Apr. 20, 1745, in 23 Acts of the 

North Carolina General Assembly, 1745, at 218, 219 (1805); 

1771 N.J. Laws 19–20; 1832 Va. Acts 70; 1838 Md. Laws 

291–92; 12 Del. Laws 365 (1863).

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jurisdictions, were punishable by death from the Colonial era 

through the Revolutionary War.113 

Although the majority suggests that the death penalty 

soon fell out of use for such offenses,114 historical records show 

otherwise. In 1790, the First Congress made counterfeiting and 

forgery capital offenses.115 On December 14, 1792, within a 

year of the ratification of the Bill of Rights, Georgia passed an 

“An Act for the More Effectually Preventing and Punishing 

Forgery,” which penalized fraud, counterfeiting, and forgery 

113 See Maj. Op. at 14, 22; see, e.g., A Digest of the Laws of 

Maryland 255 (Thomas Herty ed., 1799) (punishing forgers 

with “death as a felon, without benefit of clergy”); Acts and 

Laws of The English Colony of Rhode Island and ProvidencePlantations in New-England in America 33–34 (1767) (punishing any person convicted of forging or counterfeiting bills of 

credit with “Pains of Death”); 10 Statutes at Large of Pennsylvania 307, 384 (James T. Mitchell & Henry Flanders eds., 

1904) (making forgery and counterfeiting capital crimes in 

1781); Acts of the General Assembly of the State of New Jersey

8, 136 (Peter Wilson ed., 1784) (listing counterfeiting and theft 

as capital offenses); see generally Banner, supra note 101, at 

7–8; Kathryn Preyer, Penal Measures in the American Colonies: An Overview, 26 Am. J. Legal Hist. 326, 337, 340, 342, 

343, 344, 348 (1982) (detailing capital punishment for non-violent offenses in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and 

New York).

114 See Maj. Op. at 14–15.

115 See Act of April 30, 1790, ch. 9, § 14, 1 Stat. 112, 115

(“every such person” convicted of forgery, dealing in forged 

securities, or counterfeiting “shall suffer death”).

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with death.116 Five days later, the General Assembly of 

Virginia passed an “Act[] for Punishing Persons Guilty of 

Certain Thefts and Forgeries,” which added forgery, 

counterfeiting, and theft to the list of nonclergyable capital 

offenses.117 In New York, people convicted of counterfeiting, 

forgery, and larceny continued to “suffer death as a felon” for 

years after the Second Amendment’s ratification.118 In 1796, 

New Jersey declared that anyone convicted of forgery for a 

second time “shall suffer death.”119 And at the turn of the 

nineteenth century, forgery and counterfeiting remained capital 

crimes in the first instance in Maryland and North Carolina,120

116 A Digest of the Laws of the State of Georgia 467–68 (1800); 

see also id. at 181, 342–43, 449.

117 A Collection of All Such Acts of the General Assembly of 

Virginia, of a Public or Permanent Nature, as are Now in 

Force 260–61 (1794). Two years later, Virginia doubled 

down, clarifying that anyone convicted of forging or counterfeiting, or assisting in the forging or counterfeiting, of “any 

deed, will, testament, bond, writing obligatory, bill of exchange, promissory note . . . or other valuable thing . . . shall 

suffer death as a felon without benefit of clergy.” Id. at 333. 

118 2 Laws of the State of New York 41–42, 74 (1792). Between 

1791 and 1796, New York executed at least 10 people for forgery. See Mark Espy, Executions in the U.S. 1608–2002,

Death Penalty Info. Ctr. 41–44, https://dpic-cdn.org/production/legacy/ESPYyear.pdf (last visited Dec. 23, 2024).

119 An Act of Mar. 18, 1796, reprinted in Laws of the State of 

New-Jersey 221 (William Paterson ed., 1800).

120 See A Digest of the Laws of Maryland, supra note 113, at 

255–56; 1 The Public Acts of the General Assembly of NorthCarolina 242 (James Iredell & Francois-Xavier Martin eds., 

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while Alabama made forgery, counterfeiting, fraud, and other 

crimes of deceit capital offenses in 1807.121

To be sure, a few states dispensed with capital 

punishment for forgery, counterfeiting, and other crimes of 

deceit in the decade following ratification.122 But a handful of 

“outlier” laws from the Early Republic does not negate what 

had become a regulatory tradition. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 70; id. 

at 46 (expressing “doubt that three colonial regulations could 

suffice to show a tradition”). And concluding from the laws of 

a few more lenient jurisdictions that the Constitution precluded 

more severe penalties not only ignores the historical reality in 

other jurisdictions, but also wrongly “assumes that foundingera legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate.” 

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1925 (Barrett, J., concurring). 

Regardless, the inference drawn by the majority from 

this history—that Founding-era legislatures lacked authority to 

permanently punish non-violent felons—is mistaken. Instead, 

the statutes cited by the majority prove that even when the most 

progressive states in our Early Republic dispensed with the 

death penalty for certain crimes, they continued to exercise their 

authority to permanently punish non-violent felons. For 

example, Connecticut, as the majority points out, ended capital 

punishment for counterfeiting and forgery in 1784.123 But 

rather than being executed, twice-convicted forgers and 

1804); Banner, supra note 101, at 139 (explaining that counterfeiting and horse stealing remaining capital offenses in Maryland until 1809).

121 A Digest of the Laws of the State of Alabama 210–11 (Harry 

Toulmin ed., 1823).

122 See Maj. Op. at 14–15, 15 n.4.

123 See id.

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counterfeiters in Connecticut were imprisoned and “kept to 

hard Labour during the Term of his or her natural Life,” while 

Connecticut continued to punish other non-violent crimes like 

perjury with death.124 New York likewise experimented with 

eliminating capital punishment for these non-violent crimes. 

In 1786, its legislature passed a law punishing those who 

counterfeited state bills of credit with life imprisonment and 

complete estate forfeiture.125 But it reversed course just two 

years later and reinstated capital punishment for all 

counterfeiters.126 For forgery, New York also “chang[ed] the 

punishment . . . from death into imprisonment for life” in 1796, 

but again, “the legal consequences of the conviction, as to 

disability . . . remained the same. The party was incapacitated, 

forever” from exercising his Second Amendment rights

because a felon sentenced to life in prison was “deemed to be 

124 Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut in America 24, 66 

(1784). When Connecticut updated its criminal codes in 1796, 

theft, forgery, fraud, counterfeiting, and perjury continued to 

be subject to permanent punishment. See Acts and Laws of the 

State of Connecticut in America 184 (1796) (establishing that 

a thrice-convicted thief, forger, counterfeiter, or user of counterfeit coins would be “imprison[ed]” for the duration of “his 

natural life”); id. at 182 (listing perjury as a capital offense).

125 N.Y. Act of 1786, supra note 105, at 260–61 (declaring that 

anyone convicted of counterfeiting or altering a newly minted 

bill of credit or knowingly using a counterfeited or altered bill 

of credit “shall forfeit all his or her estate both real and personal 

to the . . . State, and be committed to the [city jail] for life, and 

there confined to hard labor”).

126 See An Act for Preventing and Punishing Forgery and 

Counterfeiting (Feb. 7, 1788), reprinted in 2 Laws of the State 

of New York 41–42 (1792).

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civilly dead, to all intents and purposes.”127 So even the laws 

cited by the majority confirm that early legislatures had the 

flexibility to punish non-violent felons in a variety of ways, up 

to and including physical and civil death, both of which

permanently extinguished the felon’s civil rights. See Folajtar 

v. Att’y Gen., 980 F.3d 897, 920 (3d Cir. 2020) (Bibas, J., 

dissenting).

b. Post-Ratification Tradition

As the Nation’s footprint expanded to the south and the 

west, legislative authority to permanently disarm non-violent 

criminals followed in tow. Although some states continued to 

execute thieves, counterfeiters, forgers, and fraudsters until the 

mid-nineteenth century,128 other legislatures, during the Era of 

Good Feelings, transitioned to stripping these non-law-abiding 

citizens of fundamental rights. 

In 1820, one of the Nation’s early leading lawyers and 

“best known” proponents of abolishing capital punishment, 

127 Troup v. Wood, 4 Johns. Ch. 228, 247–48 (N.Y. Ch. 1820); 

see also Kanter, 919 F.3d at 459 (Barrett, J., dissenting) (“Civil 

death was a state in which a person ‘though living, was considered dead’—a status ‘very similar to natural death in that all 

civil rights were extinguished.’” (quoting Harry David Saunders, Note, Civil Death—A New Look at an Ancient Doctrine, 

11 Wm. & Mary L. Rev. 988, 988–89 (1970))).

128 South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Texas, and California 

executed white people for counterfeiting, forgery, and theft until the 1850s. See Banner supra note 101, at 18, 139–40; see

also, e.g., Espy, supra note 118, at 51, 70, 80 (forgery); id. at 

56, 62 (counterfeiting); id. at 71, 94, 95 (theft); id. at 49, 50, 

52, 63, 64, 93 (horse theft).

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Edward Livingston, was tasked with preparing a systematic 

code of criminal law for Louisiana.129 At the time, Louisiana’s 

laws consisted of a “medley of laws and customs” from France, 

Spain, and English common law that often imposed harsh and 

unequal punishments, including death for non-violent 

crimes.130 Livingston’s proposed codes, which brought 

“moderation to the system of crimes and punishments,”131

eliminated the death penalty for many crimes—including 

forgery, perjury, and fraud. Capital punishment was replaced 

with the lesser punishments of “imprisonment” and the 

“suspension” and permanent “forfeiture” of “political or civil 

rights”—including the “right of bearing arms.”132 Under 

Livingston’s code of punishments, those convicted of perjury 

and forgery were permanently disarmed, while fraudsters lost 

their armament rights for only five years.133

129 Banner, supra note 101, at 138.

130 Elon H. Moore, The Livingston Code, 19 J. Am. Inst. Crim. 

L. & Criminology 344, 345 (1928).

131 Carleton Hunt, Life and Services of Edward Livingston 31

(1903) (emphasis added).

132 Edward Livingston, A System of Penal Law for the State of 

Louisiana 377, 378 (1833); see id. at 745 (defining “political 

rights” as “those which are given by the constitution” and 

“civil rights” as “those which every free person is authorized, 

by law, to exercise for the preservation either of his own person 

[or] property”).

133 Id. at 393 (seven years’ imprisonment and permanent disarmament for perjury); id. at 409 (fifteen years’ imprisonment 

and permanent disarmament for forgery); id. at 454 (one-year 

imprisonment and five-years’ disarmament for fraudulent 

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Many contemporaries concurred with Livingston’s 

proposals to deprive convicts of only certain rights—including 

the right to bear arms—instead of extinguishing all of their 

rights through capital punishment. His work won wide acclaim 

from such Founders as Jefferson, Madison, and Story.134 Chief 

Justice Marshall, who read one of these codes “with attention 

and interest,” likewise saw no constitutional concerns, writing 

in a letter to Livingston: “Among your penalties a deprivation 

of civil and political rights is frequently introduced. I believe 

no former legislator has relied sufficiently on this provision; 

and I have strong hopes of its efficacy.”135 

Although Livingston’s codes were not ultimately 

adopted, the Supreme Court has repeatedly relied on his 

proposed model legal codes for Louisiana and then for the 

United States as evidence of the types of laws that would have 

been considered permissible at the Founding.136 And 

interference with an inheritance). These proposals are particularly notable considering Livingston’s desire to create a criminal code that was consistent with the “right[s] secured by the 

constitution,” including “the right to bear arms.” Id. at 62; see 

also Edward Livingston, A System of Penal Law for the United 

States 19-20, 40, 79, 126 (1828) (similar provisions in model 

penal code for the United States).

134 See Moore, supra note 130, at 345, 355.

135 Letter from John Marshall to Edward Livingston (Oct. 24, 

1825), https://findingaids.princeton.edu/catalog/C0280_c3493.

136 See, e.g., Beauharnais v. Illinois, 343 U.S. 250, 255 n.4 

(1952) (citing Livingston’s “famous draft System of Penal law 

for Louisiana” as example of historical libel laws); Cruzan v. 

Dir. Mo. Dep’t of Health, 497 U.S. 261, 294 (1990) (Scalia, J., 

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Livingston’s proposal to punish certain non-violent felons with 

permanent disarmament is consistent not only with Foundingera penalties that explicitly or necessarily deprived non-violent 

felons of their right to bear arms, but also, as social mores 

continued to evolve, laws in the early 1800s that permanently 

stripped non-violent felons of other fundamental rights.137 

Alabama, for instance, deprived “any person . . . 

convicted of bribery, forgery, [or] perjury” from exercising 

several fundamental rights, including holding state office, 

serving as a juror, or voting in any election.138 In Missouri, 

convicted forgers, embezzlers, counterfeiters, fraudsters, 

bribers, and thieves could not serve as witnesses or jurors, vote, 

or hold public office.139 And while Indiana continued to punish 

horse thieves and recipients of stolen horses with death, it 

deprived those who committed or helped commit perjury, 

concurring) (citing Livingston’s draft code for our history of 

criminalizing assisted suicide).

137 Because the traditional punishment for serious crimes was 

death, early legislatures had little occasion to enact laws explicitly disarming persons convicted of such crimes. Nonetheless, they did enact laws disarming perpetrators of a variety of 

non-violent offenses. See supra notes 102–112 and accompanying text. 

138 Act of Nov. 17, 1819, reprinted in A Digest of the Laws of 

the State of Alabama 230 (Harry Toulmin ed., 1823). 

139 A Digest of the Laws of the Missouri Territory 140–45, 149–

50 (Henry Geyer ed., 1818). 

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forgery, fraud, embezzlement, or counterfeiting of their ability 

to serve in any public office, the military, or on juries.140 

In sum, before, during, and for a period even after the 

dawn of our Republic, felons convicted of crimes of deceit 

could face death, life imprisonment, civil death, and deprivation of their fundamental rights because they were presumed to 

permanently pose a special risk of danger to society.141 And 

the categorical disarmament laws show that legislatures could 

prophylactically disarm such categories of people, subject to 

individual applications for a restoration of rights.

142

 With those 

regulatory traditions in mind, we next consider the constitutionality of § 922(g)(1) as applied to Range.

C. Section 922(g)(1) as Applied to Range

No doubt, the categorical disarmament laws and felony 

punishment laws are “two distinct legal regimes” and 

§ 922(g)(1) “is by no means identical to these founding era 

regimes.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1899, 1901. But “it does not 

need to be,” id. at 1901, because we are not looking for 

“historical twin[s],” but for “principles underlying the Second 

Amendment” that are “relevantly similar” to those animating 

the statute now before us, id. at 1898 (citation omitted). And 

“[t]aken together,” id. at 1901, those two legal regimes 

demonstrate that § 922(g)(1)—with one qualification 

discussed below, infra Section I.C.2—“comport[s] with the 

140 Laws of the Indiana Territory 25–28, 30 (1807); Compend 

of the Acts of Indiana 73, 76, 87–88 (W. Johnston ed., 1817);

Banner, supra note 101, at 131.

141 See generally supra Section I.B.2.

142 See generally supra Section I.B.1.

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principles underlying the Second Amendment,” id. at 1898, as 

applied to Range. 

1. Section 922(g)(1) Generally Comports 

with Regulatory Tradition

In comparing a challenged regulation with the 

principles underlying its historic analogues, “[w]hy and how 

the regulation burdens the right are central to th[e] inquiry.” 

Id. 

As for the “why,” four centuries of unbroken AngloAmerican history shows that legislatures consistently disarmed 

entire categories of people who were presumed to pose a 

special risk of misusing firearms. Only after an individual 

made the requisite showing to a government official—

rebutting the class-wide presumption of firearms misuse—was 

the disability on the individual’s right to possess firearms 

lifted. The Founding generation understood that felons—who 

could be sentenced to death or life imprisonment, stripped of 

their fundamental rights, including their right to arms143—were 

one such group. It is no wonder that Rahimi, citing to Heller’s 

assurance of the presumptive constitutionality of felon-inpossession bans, repudiated the “suggest[ion] that the Second 

Amendment prohibits the enactment of laws banning the 

possession of guns by categories of persons thought by a 

legislature to present a special danger of misuse.” Id. at 1901. 

At the Founding, the purpose of capital punishment and 

life imprisonment for certain crimes of deceit, akin to Range’s 

fraud offense, “was threefold: deterrence, retribution, and 

penitence.” Diaz, 116 F.4th at 469. Those purposes continued 

143 See supra Section I.B.2.

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53

to animate the early nineteenth century laws stripping such 

felons of other fundamental rights.

144

 The justification for 

§ 922(g)(1)—deterring lawlessness by those categorically 

presumed to pose a special risk of danger to society—is 

“relevantly similar.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 (quoting 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29). In enacting § 922(g)(1), “Congress 

obviously determined that firearms must be kept away from” 

felons because they belong to a class “who might be expected 

to misuse them.” Dickerson v. New Banner Inst., Inc., 460 U.S. 

103, 119 (1983).145 And just as legislatures dating back to the 

144 See supra notes 129–136 and accompanying text (discussing proposals to punish those convicted of forgery and perjury 

with permanent disarmament); supra notes 137–140 and accompanying text (discussing laws prohibiting forgers, counterfeiters, fraudsters, and thieves from holding office, voting, being on a jury, or serving in the military).

145 See also Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 55, 63, 67 (1980)

(explaining that federal gun laws, which were intended to be 

“a sweeping prophylaxis, in simple terms, against misuse of 

firearms,” focus on felony convictions “in order to keep firearms away from potentially dangerous persons”); Scarborough 

v. United States, 431 U.S. 563, 572 (1977) (“Congress sought 

to . . . keep guns out of the hands of those who have demonstrated that they may not be trusted to possess a firearm without 

becoming a threat to society.” (internal quotation marks omitted)); Barrett v. United States, 423 U.S. 212, 218 (1976) (“The 

very structure of the Gun Control Act demonstrates that Congress . . . sought broadly to keep firearms away from the persons Congress classified as potentially irresponsible and dangerous”); Huddleston v. United States, 415 U.S. 814, 824 

(1974) (explaining that the principle purpose of the Safe Streets 

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54

Founding determined that certain non-violent felons, including 

those who committed fraud offenses like Range’s, should be 

prohibited from possessing firearms, “Congress’ judgment that 

a convicted felon . . . is among the class of persons who should 

be disabled from . . . possessing firearms because of potential 

dangerousness is rational.” Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 

55, 67 (1980). Moreover, like the felony punishment laws of 

our nascent Republic that imposed punishments necessarily 

encompassing disarmament, § 922(g)(1) applies only to those 

convicted of crimes that, as reflected in their applicable prison 

terms, are deemed most serious by modern-day legislatures in 

their respective jurisdictions. 

As to the “how,” § 922(g)(1), like its Founding-era 

analogues, applies after a person is convicted of a felony and 

deprives that felon of the right to bear arms on a presumptively 

permanent basis. Capital punishment, life imprisonment, and 

civil death entailed permanent disarmament, as did estate 

forfeiture at times.

146

 Thus, just as the availability of 

imprisonment to respond to the Founding-era offenses akin to 

§ 922(g)(8) rendered “the lesser restriction of temporary 

disarmament that Section 922(g)(8) imposes . . . permissible” 

in Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1902, the availability of capital 

punishment and life imprisonment to respond to non-violent 

crimes like theft, forgery, counterfeiting, fraud, and perjury at 

the Founding and beyond shows that “the lesser restriction” of 

Act and Gun Control Act “was to curb crime” and “lawlessness”).

146 United States v. Diaz, 116 F.4th 458, 469 (5th Cir. 2024)

(“[T]he majority of the estate forfeiture laws . . . did not provide an opportunity for offenders to regain their possessions.”). 

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disarmament imposed by § 922(g)(1) “is also permissible,”

id.

147

2. Range’s Pre-Enforcement Challenge

Although § 922(g)(1) on its face fits “neatly within” our

historical tradition, Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1901, there is one 

147 Our sister circuits have likewise relied on Rahimi’s greaterincludes-the-lesser reasoning to hold that § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as applied to felons who committed a variety of nonviolent crimes. See, e.g., United States v. Hunt, No. 22-4525, 

2024 WL 5149611, at *6 (4th Cir. Dec. 18, 2024) (adopting 

Rahimi’s “greater-includes-the-lesser theory” to foreclose asapplied challenges to § 922(g)(1)); Diaz, 116 F.4th at 469 

(“Here, if capital punishment was permissible to respond to 

theft, then the lesser restriction of permanent disarmament that 

§ 922(g)(1) imposes is also permissible.”); Jackson, 110 F.4th 

at 1125, 1127 (holding that § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as applied to a felon who committed “non-violent” drug offenses in 

part because early legislatures “authorized punishments that 

subsumed disarmament—death or forfeiture of a perpetrator’s 

entire estate—for non-violent offenses involving deceit and 

wrongful taking of property”). They have also embraced 

Rahimi’s reasoning when upholding other subsections of 

§ 922. See, e.g., United States v. Gore, 118 F.4th 808, 815 (6th 

Cir. 2024) (rejecting as-applied challenge to § 922(n) because 

it imposed a “lesser burden” than its historical predecessors); 

United States v. Veasley, 98 F.4th 906, 915 (8th Cir. 2024) 

(“The ‘burden’ imposed by § 922(g)(3) is ‘comparable,’ if less 

heavy-handed, than Founding-era laws governing the mentally 

ill . . . It goes without saying that confinement with straitjackets and chains carries with it a greater loss of liberty than a 

temporary loss of gun rights.” (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 29)).

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respect in which the regime it establishes—in practice—does 

not comport with the “how” of these relevantly similar historic 

regulations. As I read Rahimi, that qualification obligates us 

to consider and ultimately grant Range’s request for 

declaratory relief. 

Under categorical disarmament laws, where an 

individual was presumed to pose a special risk to society by 

virtue of his membership in a particular group and thus was 

lawfully disarmed as an initial matter, there was typically a 

mechanism for him to petition and attempt to rebut that 

presumption—whether by taking a loyalty oath, renouncing 

allegiance, obtaining a license, or securing a court order.148 

Even for offenses historically punishable by death or lifetime 

imprisonment, and hence, encompassing permanent 

disarmament, that punishment followed individualized 

determinations made by a judge and jury, and a convicted felon 

could also seek clemency or a pardon based on his individual 

circumstances.

149

 And for both the categorical disarmament 

laws and the commutation of a permanent deprivation of 

liberty, the burden was on the petitioner to demonstrate that the 

class-wide presumption of dangerousness was inapplicable to 

him individually.

150 In short, our regulatory tradition—as well 

as Rahimi’s attention to the individualized findings required by 

148 See supra notes 27, 36, 45–46, 65, 67–71, 85, 87–89 and 

accompanying text.

149 See Banner, supra note 101, at 53–56; Preyer, supra note 

113, at 347–48; Kathryn Preyer, Crime, the Criminal Law and 

Reform in Post-Revolutionary Virginia, 1 Law & Hist. Rev. 53, 

61–62, 73–74, 76 (1983).

150 See supra notes 27, 36, 45–47, 72–73, 90–91 and accompanying text.

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and the durational limit of the restriction in that case—reflects 

that where disarmament is based on a categorical presumption 

of special danger to society, there must be a meaningful 

opportunity for individualized review to survive constitutional 

scrutiny.

The necessity of such individualized review was 

evidently not lost on Congress when it enacted § 922(g)(1). 

The “plain meaning” of § 922(g)(1)’s text is that “a felony 

conviction imposes a firearm disability until the conviction is 

vacated or the felon is relieved of his disability by some 

affirmative action,” Lewis, 445 U.S. at 60–61, and its 

enumeration of certain avenues for prospective relief in 

§ 921(a)(20) and § 925(c) makes it “fully apparent” that 

Congress intended there to be a mechanism to challenge the 

permanent duration of the ban, id. at 64. Like its historical 

predecessors in the states and colonies,151 Congress “clearly 

intended” that a felon “clear his status before obtaining a 

firearm,” id. (emphasis in original), and that those who violated 

that ban without seeking dispensation be subject to prosecution 

and punishment, see 18 U.S.C. §§ 921(a)(20), 924(a)(8). 

The problem is that the statutory mechanisms legislated 

by Congress are not, in practice, meaningfully available. True, 

§ 925(c) authorizes the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, 

and Explosives (ATF) to prospectively restore a felon’s right 

to possess a firearm if he proves that he “will not be likely to 

act in a manner dangerous to public safety” and that the “public 

interest” supports rearmament,152 and § 921(a)(20) exempts 

any felon whose conviction “has been expunged,” who “has 

been pardoned,” or who has had his “civil rights restored.” But 

151 See supra Section I.B.1.

152 18 U.S.C. § 925(c); 27 C.F.R. § 478.144(d).

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Congress defunded the ATF program in 1992.

153

Expungements are rare,154 as are pardons.

155 And restoration 

of rights for a convicted felon is, in many cases, not a legal 

possibility: There is no federal procedure for restoring civil 

rights for a federal felon, see Beecham v. United States, 511 

U.S. 368, 372–73 (1994), and in most states, there is no way, 

absent a state pardon, for a convicted felon to have his civil 

rights fully restored.156 

In the absence of other channels for individualized 

review, the doors to the federal courthouse must be open.157 

153 See Logan v. United States, 552 U.S. 23, 28 n.1 (2007); 

United States v. Bean, 537 U.S. 71, 74–75 & n.3 (2002); S. 

Rep. No. 102-353 (1992). 

154 Expungement is generally available for only a small subset 

of felonies. See Expungement Laws and Forms: 50-State Survey, Justia, https://www.justia.com/criminal/expungementrecord-sealing/expungement-forms-50-state-resources/ (last 

updated Feb. 2023).

155 Pardons are often discretionary and turn on political considerations. See generally Fifty-State Comparison: Pardon and 

Policy Practice, Restoration Rts. Project, https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/50-state-comparisoncharacteristics-of-pardon-authorities-2/ (last updated July 2024).

156 See Fifty-State Comparison: Loss and Restoration of 

Civil/Firearms Rights, Restoration Rts. Project, https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/chart-1-loss-andrestoration-of-civil-rights-and-firearms-privileges-2/ (last updated Mar. 2024). 

157 I take issue with our dissenting colleagues’ suggestion that 

federal courts lack authority to provide relief like I have 

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Neither our historical tradition nor our modern understanding 

of the Second Amendment as an “individual right”158 permits

us to blindly defer to a categorical presumption that a given 

individual permanently presents a special risk of danger 

without the opportunity for him to rebut it.

159

 Even so,

Congress’ judgment that a felon “might be expected to misuse” 

firearms, Dickerson, 460 U.S. at 119, and thus belongs to a 

“class of persons who should be disabled from . . . possessing 

firearms because of potential dangerousness” is undoubtedly

“rational,” Lewis, 445 U.S. at 67. It is also wholly consistent 

with this Nation’s historical tradition of disarming felons and 

other categories of people presumed by the legislature to pose 

a special danger of misusing firearms. See supra Section I.B. 

So once the Government establishes that an offender 

committed a felony, giving rise to that rational presumption, its 

burden to identify relevantly similar historical regimes has 

been satisfied, and the burden to seek a declaratory judgment, 

proposed (or like that proposed in Judge Roth’s concurrence) 

in the face of a statute that would otherwise be unconstitutional. Dissent at 8 n.7. Congress explicitly gave us the authority for the “[c]reation of [a] remedy” in the Declaratory 

Judgment Act, see 28 U.S.C. § 2201, and “‘serious constitutional question[s]’ . . . would arise if a federal statute were construed to deny any judicial forum for a colorable constitutional 

claim,” Webster v. Doe, 486 U.S. 592, 603 (1988).

158 See Heller, 544 U.S. at 595; Bruen, 597 U.S. at 32.

159 Cf. Heller, 554 U.S. at 628 n.27 (“If all that was required to 

overcome the right to keep and bear arms was a rational basis, 

the Second Amendment would be redundant with the separate 

constitutional prohibitions on irrational laws, and would have 

no effect.”).

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like the burden to take an oath of allegiance, falls to the felon.

See Williams, 113 F.4th at 662. 

Evaluating whether a felon has met that burden is not an 

unfamiliar exercise for federal judges. In rendering decisions 

about the possession of a firearm as a condition bail pending 

trial, district courts consider “the nature and circumstances of 

the offense charged, including whether the offense is a crime 

of violence,” and determine whether the defendant poses a risk 

of “danger” to the public. 18 U.S.C. § 3142(c), (g). Similarly, 

when deciding whether a felon on supervised release or 

probation must “refrain from possessing a firearm,” id. 

§§ 3563(b)(8), 3583(d), courts consider several of the federal 

sentencing factors, including “the nature and circumstances of 

the offense and the history and characteristics of the 

defendant,” as well as the need for disarmament to (1) “reflect 

the seriousness of the offense”; (2) “promote respect for the 

law, and to provide just punishment for the offense;” (3) 

“afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct;” and (4) 

“protect the public from further crimes of the defendant,” id. 

§ 3553(a)(1–2); see also Williams, 113 F.4th at 657–58; United 

States v. Jackson, 85 F.4th 468, 478 (Mem.) (8th Cir. 2023)

(Stras, J., dissenting from the denial of rehearing en banc).

Applying these factors here, the strength of the record 

precludes the need for remand. Unlike the majority—which 

places the burden on the Government not only to show that 

Range committed a felony, giving rise to the presumption that 

he poses a special risk of firearm misuse, but also to establish 

that he continues to pose that risk—I believe that historical tradition, see supra Section I.B, along with Supreme Court precedent, see Lewis, 445 U.S. at 61 (observing that the lifting of 

§ 922(g)(1)’s ban requires “some affirmative action”), places 

the burden on Range, as a convicted felon seeking to re-arm, 

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to rebut the presumption that he still poses that risk. Ultimately, however, the majority and I land in the same place because I conclude that Range has carried that burden.

Nearly thirty years have passed since Range’s predicate 

conviction—a non-violent offense involving a relatively small 

amount of funds—and besides a single summary offense for 

fishing without a license and a few minor traffic infractions, all 

evidence suggests that Range has been a law-abiding citizen in 

the intervening decades. Importantly, Range has complied 

with § 922(g)(1) until this point, and the Government itself 

concedes there is no evidence that Range is dangerous, violent, 

mentally unstable, or poses a threat to himself or the public if 

his disability is lifted.

160

 Thus, considering the § 3553(a) 

factors and the present-day risk that Range will misuse 

firearms, I will concur in the judgment.

II. The Majority’s Methodological Flaw 

Unmoved on remand by Rahimi’s call to principlesbased analogical reasoning, my colleagues in the majority 

continue to demand that the Government produce a precise 

historical match to § 922(g)(1), and, as a result, provide little

guidance for our district court colleagues charged with 

adjudicating as-applied challenges going forward. That failure 

to provide a clear and workable methodology leaves courts, 

law enforcement, firearms dealers, and felons themselves

guessing about when § 922(g)(1) can be constitutionally 

applied—disserving all with the resulting ambiguity.

160 See J.A. 171; Range I Oral Arg. at 35:05–34:10; 32:55–

31:52; 28:45–28:10.

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Rahimi, as even the majority acknowledges, calls for 

examination of “the principles underlying our Nation’s history 

and tradition of firearm regulation,” Maj. Op. at 5, not for a 

regulation that “precisely match[es] its historical precursors,” 

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898. Because our law is not “trapped in 

amber” and “the Second Amendment permits more than just 

those regulations identical to ones that could be found in 

1791,” relevantly similar historical laws are sufficient to 

uphold a modern firearm regulation. Id. at 1897–98. Bruen

also cautioned that the Second Amendment does not impose “a 

regulatory straightjacket” by requiring a “historical twin,” and 

it explained that “even if a modern-day regulation is not a dead 

ringer for historical precursors, it still may be analogous 

enough to pass constitutional muster.” 597 U.S. at 30. 

Yet how else would one describe the majority’s opinion 

other than a doomed quest for historical dead ringers? 

Confronted with the Founding-era practice of imposing the far 

more severe penalty of death and life imprisonment for the 

offenses most analogous to welfare fraud—including fraud, 

forgery, counterfeiting, perjury, and theft—the majority 

responds that the permanent loss of all rights is not analogous 

to “the particular . . . punishment at issue here—de facto 

lifetime disarmament.”161 To Rahimi’s admonition that the 

greater punishment includes the lesser and the historical reality 

that the Founding-era punishments for offenses like Range’s 

necessarily subsumed the lesser punishment of permanent 

forfeiture of firearms, the majority avers that offenses less

seriousthan Range’s were punishable by temporary rather than 

life sentences, enabling those offenders to reacquire arms upon 

161 Maj. Op. at 22 (emphasis added).

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their release from custody.

162

 To laws that categorically 

disarmed a wide range of groups “like Loyalists, Native

Americans, Quakers, Catholics, and Blacks,” the majority 

dismisses their relevance as directed at those “bearing arms 

against” the country.

163

 To the historical reality that such laws

extended beyond those “bearing arms” to well-known pacifists 

like the Quakers, the majority decries such analogies as 

inconsistent with modern-day understandings of the First and 

Fourteenth Amendments.164 And to the “why” and “how” 

those laws restricted these particular groups—total 

disarmament of all members of “groups they distrusted”—the 

majority answers that those laws “do[] nothing to prove that 

Range is part of a similar group today.”165 

But the historical analogy is patently obvious: Congress 

disarmed felons precisely because it determined that such 

persons “may not be trusted to possess a firearm without 

becoming a threat to society.’” Dickerson, 460 U.S. at 112 

(emphasis added) (quoting Lewis, 445 U.S. at 63). In this way, 

§ 922(g)(1) is simply a modern-day analogue to traditional 

legislative determinations that “firearms must be kept away 

from persons, such as those convicted of serious crimes, who 

might be expected to misuse them.” Id. at 119; see supra

Section I.B. And to that inescapable, historically grounded 

principle that Congress can categorically disarm felons as a 

class of persons presenting a special danger of firearms misuse, 

the majority can only fall back on its bottom line: any analogy 

162 Id. at 23–24. But cf. supra Section I.B.2.a.

163 Maj. Op. at 20.

164 Id. at 19–20.

165 Id. at 20.

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not precisely matching Range’s individual circumstances is 

“far too broad.”166

Indeed, the only analogue the majority declares 

sufficient—a Founding-era statute that imposed the same 

“particular”

167 restriction for the same length of time on the 

same group of people as the modern-day law168—calls for 

nothing less than a “historical twin.”169 The majority admits as 

much when, confronting the fact that the First Congress made 

forging and counterfeiting a public security a capital offense, it 

asserts that Range’s crime of making false statements to steal

public funds—though admittedly analogous—could 

hypothetically be “more analogous” to other fraud offenses 

that carried a lesser punishment.170 The majority thus thrusts 

on the Government the insurmountable burden of finding an 

identical Founding-era offense that imposes “the particular 

(and distinct) punishment” of lifetime disarmament for each 

and every felony covered by § 922(g)(1).

171

 Yet the proper 

inquiry is not offense-by-offense, but “whether the challenged 

regulation is consistent with the principles that underpin our 

regulatory tradition.” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 (emphasis 

added). Analogical reasoning under Bruen and Rahimi 

“demands [that] wider lens.” Id. at 1925 (Barrett, J., 

concurring).

At bottom, my colleagues have prescribed a 

methodology of examining historical practices in isolation and 

166 Id. at 20–21 (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 31).

167 Id. at 22.

168 See id.

169 Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30; Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1903.

170 Maj. Op. at 22. 

171 Id.

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rejecting them if they deviate in any respect from 

contemporary regulations. But for all the analogues they 

reject, they decline to adopt any articulable methodology of 

their own. And not for lack of options. Our sister circuits have 

taken divergent but principled approaches to adjudicating 

challenges to § 922(g)(1). See United States v. Hunt, No. 22-

4525, 2024 WL 5149611, at *7 (4th Cir. Dec. 18, 2024) (“Just 

as early legislatures retained the discretion to disarm categories 

of people because they refused to adhere to legal norms in the 

pre-colonial and colonial era, today’s legislatures may disarm 

people who have been convicted of conduct the legislature 

considers serious enough to render it a felony.”); United States 

v. Pierre, No. 23-11604, 2024 WL 5055533, at *2–4 (11th Cir. 

Dec. 10, 2024) (concluding that Bruen and Rahimi did not 

overrule or abrogate circuit precedent foreclosing facial and asapplied challenges to § 922(g)(1)); Williams, 113 F.4th at 661–

62 (“History shows that governments may use class-based 

[laws like § 922(g)(1)] to disarm people it believes are 

dangerous, so long as members of that class have an 

opportunity to show they aren’t.”); Diaz, 116 F.4th 469–70 

(holding that § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as applied to felons 

convicted of offenses analogous to ones that “would have led 

to capital punishment or estate forfeiture” at the Founding);

United States v. Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120, 1125 (8th Cir. 2024)

(“Given these assurances by the Supreme Court [about 

longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by 

felons], and the history that supports them, we conclude that 

there is no need for felony-by-felony litigation regarding the 

constitutionality of § 922(g)(1).”).

The closest the majority comes to adopting a coherent 

methodology is its approving reference to that of the Sixth 

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Circuit in Williams.

172

 In several respects, I agree with 

Williams. Much like the approach I proposed in my prior 

dissent173 and that I espouse today, the Sixth Circuit derived 

from historical analogues the “relevant principle” that “when 

the legislature disarms on a class-wide basis, individuals must 

have a reasonable opportunity to prove that they don’t fit the 

class-wide generalization,” 113 F.4th at 661, and because the 

government historically could “require individuals in a 

disarmed class to prove they aren’t dangerous in order to regain 

their right to possess arms,” it concluded that “in an as-applied 

challenge to § 922(g)(1), the burden rests on [the felon] to 

show he’s not dangerous,” id. at 662. So far, so good. 

At that point, however, the Sixth Circuit took a different 

turn and asserted that a defendant could raise that challenge in 

an effort to dismiss a § 922(g)(1) indictment “albeit after he 

violated the law, not before.” Id. at 663; see also Diaz, 116 

F.4th at 461, 469–70 & n.4. And that conclusion, I reject. My 

colleagues in the majority gesture at a purely prospective 

approach by clarifying that the relief we grant today on 

Range’s as-applied challenge protects him only “from 

prosecution under § 922(g)(1) for any future possession of a 

firearm.”174 Consistent with that prospective approach, they 

also clarify that the decision to grant a movant that forwardlooking relief turns not solely on the nature of the underlying 

conviction but on whether the movant currently “poses a 

172 See Maj. Op. at 21.

173 Range I, 69 F.4th at 135–38 (Krause, J., dissenting).

174 Maj. Op. at 25 (emphasis added).

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physical danger to others.”175 And to that extent, I agree with 

them. 

But there should be no ambiguity on that score, and the 

majority opinion creates more questions than it answers. As I 

explain below, requiring a pre-enforcement challenge as a 

condition of protection from prosecution under § 922(g) and 

prosecuting those who violate § 922(g)’s prohibition without 

obtaining such declaratory relief not only comports with our 

regulatory tradition but also provides a framework that is both 

administrable and comports with due process. 

III. The Benefits of Our Prospective Approach Relative 

to the Sixth Circuit’s 

Any approach that would apply post hoc determinations 

about the constitutional application of § 922(g)(1) on a 

retroactive basis—i.e., to excuse unauthorized violations of the 

statutory ban and dismiss pending § 922(g)(1) indictments or 

vacate § 922(g)(1) convictions—would be deeply flawed. 

While the Sixth Circuit attempted to cabin the harm by drawing 

a line at “dangerousness,” Williams, 113 F.4th at 659, its 

retroactive modality still falls prey to intractable doctrinal and 

practical problems.

A. Consequences of the Sixth Circuit’s Retroactive 

Approach

A retrospective mode of analysis defies not just logic, 

but also the Due Process Clause, which guarantees that a 

“person of ordinary intelligence [must have] a reasonable 

opportunity to know what is prohibited, so he may act 

175 Id.

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accordingly.”176 But particularly where (as with the majority

here) courts continue to demand a precise historical analogue, 

offenders cannot possibly know in advance of a court’s ex post

determination whether possessing a firearm post-indictment

will be deemed a constitutional entitlement or a federal felony. 

Looking to “dangerousness,” as the Sixth Circuit did,

still fails to give adequate notice about what § 922(g)(1) permissibly criminalizes. Congress enacted a bright-line rule distinguishing offenders who can possess firearms from those 

who cannot. By looking to the maximum punishment available 

for his offense, a felon or state misdemeanant can easily determine whether he can possess a gun.177 In contrast, a holding 

that § 922(g)(1) constitutionally applies ab initio only to “physically dangerous” felons or felons who commit “violent” 

crimes replaces Congress’s straightforward test with an opaque 

one, tantamount to rendering the statute void for vagueness.

After all, previous attempts by federal courts to define 

“violent felony,” e.g., for purposes of the Armed Career 

Criminal Act, yielded “repeated attempts and repeated failures 

to craft a principled and objective standard [for that term,] 

confirm[ing] its hopeless indeterminacy.”178 Those efforts 

proved so futile that the Supreme Court held in Johnson v. 

United States that the “violent felony” provision “denie[d] fair 

notice to defendants and invite[d] arbitrary enforcement by 

judges,” thus violating due process.179 If § 922(g)(1) is 

constitutionally applied only to “crimes of violence,” are we 

relegated to the widely disparaged “categorical approach,” 

176 Grayned v. City of Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108 (1972).

177 See 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20).

178 Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591, 598 (2015).

179 Id. at 597.

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excluding all offenses that lack an element of the “use of 

force”?180 What is the relevance of underlying conduct? Are

courts limited to considering Shepard documents?181 What 

about crimes that lack an element of force but are undeniably 

associated with violence, like drug trafficking, human 

trafficking, and treason?182 

Holding § 922(g)(1) unenforceable from the start as to 

an amorphous sub-class of felons also makes it virtually impossible for the Government to prove the mens rea element of 

a § 922(g) offense. In Rehaif v. United States, the Supreme 

Court held that to convict a defendant under § 922(g) the Government must prove the defendant not only knew that he possessed a firearm, but also knew that “he had the relevant status 

when he possessed [the firearm.]” 588 U.S. 225, 227 (2019). 

The Court then clarified in Greer v. United States that a Rehaif

error is not a basis for relief under the plain-error standard unless the defendant can make a sufficient argument on appeal 

that, but for the error, he could have established he did not 

know he was a felon. 593 U.S. 503, 508–10 (2021). That 

would be a difficult argument to make, the Court observed, because “as common sense suggests, individuals who are 

180 United States v. Scott, 14 F.4th 190, 195 (3d Cir. 2021).

181 Those documents include the “charging document, written 

plea agreement, transcript of plea colloquy, and any explicit 

factual finding by the trial judge to which the defendant assented.” Shepard v. United States, 544 U.S. 13, 16 (2005).

182 Range himself candidly conceded at the original en banc 

oral argument that, under a “violence” test, offenses like possession of child pornography, money laundering, and drunk 

driving would not support disarmament. Range I Oral Arg. at 

19:51–20:20, 24:00–24:26.

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convicted felons ordinarily know that they are convicted felons 

[for purposes of § 922(g)(1).]” Id. at 506.

But a test that turns on a court’s post hoc determination 

that § 922(g)(1) was unenforceable from the beginning replaces Rehaif’s clear and ascertainable standard with an incoherent one: the Government now must prove that, when he possessed the firearm, the felon knew his particular offense of conviction would later be held to have a historical match. And in 

lieu of Greer’s high threshold for plain-error relief, that reasoning hands defendants a ready-made argument for appeal: 

that they could not know at the time they possessed a firearm—

indeed, at any time before a court made the determination—

whether their particular felony offense was subject to or exempt from § 922(g)(1). In short, granting relief on a retroactive 

basis throws open the floodgates the Supreme Court sought to 

close on Rehaif errors in Greer and augursin a deluge of Rehaif

challenges.

Additionally, a retroactive approach has sweeping implications for state felon-in-possession restrictions. By making 

application of felon-in-possession statutes void ab initio, the 

retroactive approach permits felons to raise the same Second 

Amendment challenges to state regulations as they can to their 

federal counterpart, leaving state felon-in-possession statutes 

susceptible to the same patchwork constitutionality as 

§ 922(g)(1). Those laws differ significantly across the fortyeight states that restrict offenders’ firearm rights—including 

which offenses trigger restrictions as well as their duration—

in keeping with each state’s local circumstances.183 Instead of 

183 See generally Fifty-State Comparison: Loss and Restoration of Civil/Firearms Rights, Restoration Rts. Project, 

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71

ensuring local communities’ concerns and values shape when 

felons may possess firearms under state law, the retroactive approach brushes aside these weighty federalism interests, making applications of local firearm restrictions unconstitutional at 

the outset where they do not precisely match a historical twin. 

Congress took great care to respect local interests in 

§ 922(g)(1) by incorporating state law felony equivalents. See

18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20). The retroactive approach displaces 

this careful balance of federal and state interests in favor of

unpredictable, post hoc determinations, unresponsive to the 

needs of local communities and antithetical to our system of 

federalism.

Finally, anything short of requiring a pre-enforcement 

challenge severely undermines law enforcement efforts and 

makes the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check 

System (NICS) obsolete. Currently, NICS includes over five 

million felony conviction records,184 and that number continues to grow as additional agencies contribute records to the 

NICS database.185 Prior felony convictions are by far the most 

common reason individuals fail NICS background checks.186 

https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/chart-1-

loss-and-restoration-of-civil-rights-and-firearms-privileges-2/

(last visited Dec. 23, 2024).

184 Active Records in the NICS Indices, FBI, 

https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/active_records_in_the_nics-indices.pdf/view (last updated Nov. 30, 

2024).

185 See Dru Stevenson, In Defense of Felon-in-Possession 

Laws, 43 Cardozo L. Rev. 1573, 1597 (2022).

186 See Federal Denials, FBI, https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/federal_denials.pdf/view (last updated Nov. 30, 2024).

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And the Supreme Court in Bruen endorsed the use of background checks, for violent and non-violent offenses alike, to 

ensure individuals bearing firearms are “law-abiding” citizens. 

See 597 U.S. at 38 n.9.

An indeterminant, post hoc test for which felons fall 

outside § 922(g)(1) and under what circumstances renders

NICS a dead letter. When the police receive a tip that an exoffender is toting an assault rifle, how do they—or prosecutors 

for that matter—know if they have probable cause to arrest him 

for violating the felon-possession ban, or if they instead are

bringing liability on themselves for violating the felon’s civil 

rights? Do they look to particular elements of the prior offense 

to determine that the felon is a “dangerous” or to the conduct 

underlying that offense? How do they assess that conduct in 

the case of guilty pleas entered years ago? This approach requires law enforcement in the first instance to undertake the 

historical research with which even the federal courts have 

struggled to determine whether there is a precise match and 

thus probable cause to support an arrest under § 922(g)(1), rendering their jobs, at best, substantially more difficult, and, at 

worst, nearly impossible.

And, without a functional background check system, 

how do firearms licensees (FFLs) comply with federal law? 

Where as-applied challenges can render § 922(g)(1) unenforceable from the outset, FFLs who discover that a potential 

customer has a felony conviction have no way of knowing 

whether that offense has a precise historical match or whether 

the individual will be considered by a court to be “physically 

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dangerous.”187 Of particular concern, any assessments based 

on such “vague criteria are vulnerable to biases” along race, 

class, gender, and other lines, resulting in disparities between 

which groups retain gun rights and which do not.188

B. Requiring a Declaratory Judgment Avoids These 

Pitfalls

Holding § 922(g)(1) enforceable through at least the 

successful completion of a felon’s sentence and requiring a 

declaratory judgment as a prerequisite to relief thereafter not 

only adheres to our regulatory tradition and the Court’s 

precedent but also provides a clear and administrable 

framework.189

187 The penalty for incorrectly concluding a felon can purchase

a weapon without an exhaustive inspection of the felon’s 

crime, conduct, and personal circumstances will be stiff: a single error will result in the loss of the FFL’s license, barring the 

FFL from the industry. See Simpson v. Att’y Gen., 913 F.3d 

110, 114 (3d Cir. 2019). 

188 Ryan T. Sakoda, The Architecture of Discretion: Implications of the Structure of Sanctions for Racial Disparities, Severity, and Net Widening, 117 Nw. U. L. Rev. 1213, 1227 

(2023); cf. Joseph Blocher & Reva B. Siegel, Race and Guns, 

Courts and Democracy, 135 Harv. L. Rev. F. 449, 449 (2022) 

(arguing “racial justice concerns [with firearm laws] should be 

addressed in democratic politics rather than in the federal 

courts”).

189 Judge Roth acknowledges that there is a meaningful difference between the proposal that an individual’s opportunity to 

petition for rearmament arises after the sentence has been 

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 First, declaratory judgment proceedings give effect to 

the Court’s oft-repeated instruction that felon-possession bans 

are “presumptively lawful,”190 while respecting that the 

Government bears the initial burden to “demonstrate that the 

regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition 

of firearm regulation.”191 Once the Government establishes 

served, and the proposal that it arises after the duration of the 

maximum sentence available for the conviction has 

passed. She agrees, however, on the most important point: felons should have a date for when they may petition courts for 

rearmament, and specific guidance for what they must show 

for relief. Judge Roth also strongly agrees with the above critiques of the majority opinion.

190 Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27 & n.26; see McDonald, 561 U.S. 

at 786; Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1902; Bruen, 597 U.S. at 72 (Alito, 

J., concurring); id. at 81 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). As the 

Tenth Circuit has observed, “[b]ecause the ‘presumptively 

lawful regulatory measures’ language, first stated in Heller,

has not been abrogated,” and has been restated in McDonald, 

Bruen, and Rahimi, “it remains good law.” Rocky Mountain 

Gun Owners v. Polis, 121 F.4th 96, 119 (10th Cir. 2024); see 

also Binderup v. Att’y Gen., 836 F.3d 336, 359 n.3 (3d Cir. 

2016) (Hardiman, J., concurring in part) (explaining that “Heller’s list of ‘presumptively lawful’ regulations . . . does not 

qualify as dicta”), abrogated on other grounds by Bruen, 597 

U.S. 1. Moreover, even if it were dicta, “federal appellate 

courts are bound by the Supreme Court’s considered dicta almost as firmly as by the Court’s outright holdings, particularly 

when, as here, a dictum is of recent vintage and not enfeebled 

by any subsequent statement.” Oyebanji v. Gonzales, 418 F.3d 

260, 265 (3d Cir. 2005) (Alito, J.) (cleaned up).

191 Bruen, 597 U.S. at 17.

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that an offender committed a felony, it has necessarily satisfied 

its burden consistent with the historical practice of disarming 

felons upon conviction. The burden at that point, like the 

taking of oaths or swearing allegiance, falls on the felon to 

rebut the ban’s presumptive lawfulness by establishing he is 

currently a “law-abiding citizen” who no longer poses a special 

risk of danger or misusing firearms.192

Second, limiting relief in as-applied § 922(g)(1) challenges to prospective declaratory judgments eliminates an intractable due process problem. Any felon who possessed a 

firearm before securing a favorable declaratory judgment 

would remain subject to prosecution under § 922(g)(1), and 

those granted relief would have their rights restored prospectively. That clear rule would provide felons with constitutionally adequate notice as to whether and when they regained their 

right to bear arms, allowing § 922(g)(1) to withstand void-forvagueness challenges. Prospective declaratory judgments likewise avoid opening the floodgates to mens rea challenges to 

§ 922(g)(1) prosecutions, and the high threshold Greer set for 

defendants to overturn § 922(g)(1) convictions would endure.193

Third, making a declaratory judgment a prerequisite to 

avoiding § 922(g)(1) enforcement shows respect for the separation of powers and federalism. Other than for those who 

192 Id. at 26. This approach would not result in repetitive actions because a felon who brings an unsuccessful declaratory 

judgment suit must provide “newly discovered evidence that, 

with reasonable diligence, could not have been discovered” to 

prevail in a subsequent as-applied challenge to § 922(g)(1). 

Fed. R. Civ. P. 60(b)(2).

193 See 593 U.S. at 508–09.

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received favorable declaratory judgments, Congress’s decision 

to disarm felons would remain intact. Also, state statutes restricting felons’ firearms rights would be generally enforceable, ensuring local communities’ concerns and values continue 

to shape when felons are permitted to possess firearms under 

state law. 

Finally, a prospective approach avoids the potentially 

debilitating effect on law enforcement, U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and our background check system. Currently, felons can 

submit documentation to the FBI through a voluntary appealfile application, including “information regarding an expungement, restoration of firearm rights, pardon, etc.”194

 Successful 

applicants receive a unique personal identification number to 

prevent future background check denials.195 Thus, a felon who 

secures a prospective declaratory judgment can simply submit 

that judgment to the FBI to prevent false positives on his background check when next purchasing firearms. Then, just as 

they do today, law enforcement and prosecutors could depend 

on NICS for data when deciding whom to charge with violating 

§ 922(g)(1); courts could rely on existing jury instructions, the 

standard conditions of supervised release or parole, and the 

plain-error test set out in Greer; and firearm dealers could 

194 Types of Documents Requested Based on Prohibitor, FBI 

(Sept. 14, 2018), https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/nics-appeal-documents-requested.pdf/view.

195 Firearm-Related Challenge (Appeal) and Voluntary Appeal 

File (VAF), FBI, https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-helpyou/more-fbi-services-and-information/nics/national-instantcriminal-background-check-system-nics-appeals-vaf (last visited Dec. 23, 2024).

Case: 21-2835 Document: 156 Page: 141 Date Filed: 12/23/2024
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ascertain from a background check whether a felon can purchase weapons.

Without clearly limiting as-applied challenges to 

prospective relief, we put our citizenry at risk for tragic 

consequences: a flood of motions to dismiss indictments, 

appeals, and reversals of § 922(g)(1) convictions; more armed 

felons on our streets; more gun violence; and less trust in a 

judiciary mired in formalism and the usurpation of legislative 

authority. The Supreme Court had the opportunity to take up 

Range I and instead remanded, resurrecting a circuit split and 

a tower of uncertainty. The sooner it provides clarity, the safer 

our republic will be.

IV. Conclusion 

For the foregoing reasons, I respectfully concur in the 

judgment.

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1

ROTH, Circuit Judge, concurring in judgment with whom 

KRAUSE and CHUNG, Circuit Judges join in part. 

The Supreme Court has consistently and repeatedly 

reaffirmed Congress’s presumptive power to limit felons’ 

rights to possess firearms.1 The facial constitutionality of § 

922(g)(1) is not up for debate under this presumption—nor is 

it before us on Range’s appeal. But Rahimi and Bruen have 

blurred the lines between facial and as-applied challenges 

under the Second Amendment. Determining whether § 

922(g)(1) “comport[s] with the principles underlying the 

Second Amendment”2requires us to articulate broad principles 

underlying the challenged regulation and their relevant 

similarity to oft-repeated historical analogues. 

I write separately to focus on two aspects of Range’s 

circumstances: the permanent loss of his right to bear firearms, 

and the necessity of an efficient path to resolve similar 

1 See District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 626–27, 627 

n.26 (2008) (describing certain categorical prohibitions, like 

felon dispossession, as “presumptively lawful”); accord. 

United States v. Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 1889, 1902 (2024); N.Y. 

State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1, 80–81 (2022) 

(Kavanaugh, J., concurring); McDonald v. City of Chicago, 

561 U.S. 742, 786 (2010); see also Lewis v. United States, 445 

U.S. 55, 65 n.8 (1980) (“These legislative restrictions on the 

use of firearms are neither based upon constitutionally suspect 

criteria, nor do they trench upon any constitutionally protected 

liberties.”); United States v. Bass, 404 U.S. 336, 338 (1971) 

(affirming § 922(g)(1) as a constitutionally valid exercise of 

Congress’ Commerce Clause authority). 

2 Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898. 

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2

situations. I am convinced that, in the case of a nonviolent, 

reformed offender, the loss of the right to possess firearms 

should not be de facto permanent. Over two decades have 

passed since Range completed his sentence for obtaining 

public welfare funds by misrepresentation—two decades 

during which he has demonstrated law-abiding, peaceful 

behavior and shown his possession of firearms would not pose 

any danger to the public. The ban of § 922(g)(1) should no 

longer apply to him.

The government and our sister circuits have presented 

an exhaustive survey of statutes that set forth an unmistakable 

Anglo-American tradition of categorical disarmament.3 As the 

sources provided by the government make clear, from English 

3 See, e.g., United States v. Williams, 113 F.4th 637, 653 (6th 

Cir. 2024); United States v. Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120, 1126 (8th 

Cir. 2024); United States v. Perez-Garcia, 96 F.4th 1166, 1186 

(9th Cir. 2024); United States v. Duarte, 101 F.4th 657, 676 

(9th Cir. 2024), opinion vacated, 108 F.4th 786 (9th Cir. 2024); 

see also Saul Cornell, Constitutional Mischiefs and 

Constitutional Remedies: Making Sense of Limits on the Right 

to Keep and Bear Arms in the Founding Era, 51 Fordham Urb. 

L.J. 25, 47 (2023); Joseph G. S. Greenlee, The Historical 

Justification for Prohibiting Dangerous Persons from 

Possessing Arms, 20 Wyo. L. Rev. 249, 259 (2020); Michael 

A. Bellesiles, Gun Laws in Early America: The Regulation of 

Firearms Ownership, 1607–1794, 16 L. & Hist. Rev. 567, 577 

(1998); C. Kevin Marshall, Why Can’t Martha Stewart Have a 

Gun?, 32 Harv. J.L. & Pub. Pol’y 695 (2009). 

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3

kings to the 20th century, governments have disarmed the 

peaceable and dangerous alike with varied justifications.4 

4 See generally, Krause Concurrence at 12–40 (providing an 

in-depth discussion of categorical disarmament laws from the 

English Restoration to the American Gilded Age); see also, 

e.g., 4 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of 

England, 380–89 (1769) (felons at common law generally 

forfeited their lands, goods, and chattels); Letter from George 

Washington to the Pennsylvania Council of Safety (Dec. 15, 

1776), National Archives (requesting authorization to disarm 

individuals remaining neutral in the Revolutionary war, as their 

arms were needed by the militia); Act of Mar. 7, 1923, ch. 266, 

§ 5, 1923 N.D. Laws 380 (prohibiting the possession of 

handguns by those convicted of felonies against person or 

property); Act of Oct. 3, 1961, Pub. L. No. 87-342, § 2, 75 Stat. 

757 (forbidding the receipt of a firearm by anyone convicted 

of a crime punishable by more than a year of imprisonment); 

Act of July 13, 1892, ch. 159, § 5, 27 Stat. 117 (D.C.) 

(restricting the sale of firearms to individuals below certain 

ages); Act of Feb. 4, 1881, ch. 3285, No. 67, § 1, 1881 Fla. 

Laws 87 (banning the sale of guns to persons of unsound 

mind); Act of Mar. 27, 1879, ch. 59, § 4, 1879 Conn. Pub. Acts 

394 (disarming “tramps” or “vagrants”); Act of Feb. 23, 1867, 

ch. 12, § 1, 1867 Kan. Sess. Laws 25 (forbidding intoxicated 

persons from possessing guns); Federal Firearms Act, ch. 850, 

§ 2(d)-(f), 52 Stat. 1251 (1938) (banning violent criminals, 

fugitives from justice, and persons under felony indictment 

from possessing firearms); Act of Oct. 3, 1961 (disarming 

felons in general, drug users and addicts, and persons with 

mental illnesses); Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement 

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4

If the government’s proposed analogues are evidence of 

a historical tradition underlying the Second Amendment, then 

the legislature’s power to categorically disarm is undeniably 

broad. In enacting § 922(g)(1), Congress intended to exercise 

the full breadth of this power, believing that a felonyequivalent conviction was a sufficient indicator that such 

individuals posed a danger of misuse.

5

 Congress imposed 

categorical disarmament as a preventive and/or reformative 

measure.6 Moreover, the government has met its burden of 

setting forth analogues that are “relevantly similar” to § 

922(g)(1) in “why ... [they] burden[] the Second Amendment 

right.”

7

 These analogues establish a historical principle of 

disarmament to address the danger of the misuse of firearms, 

and the Supreme Court has repeatedly identified § 922(g)(1) as 

a “presumptively lawful regulatory measure[].”8 

Act of 1994 (disarming individuals subject to domestic 

violence restraining orders).

5

 See also, Huddleston v. United States, 415 U.S. 814, 824 

(1974) (“The principal purpose” of § 922(g) “was to curb crime 

by keeping ‘firearms out of the hands of those not legally 

entitled to possess them because of age, criminal background, 

or incompetency.’”) (citing 1269 S. Rep. No. 1501, 90th Cong., 

2d Sess., 22 (1968) U.S. Code Cong. & Admin. News 1968, p. 

4410).

6

Id.

7

 See Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1901 (emphasis added) (quoting 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30);see also, e.g., id. at 1902; Heller, 554 

U.S. at 626–27, 627 n.26; Bruen, 597 U.S. at 80–81 

(Kavanaugh, J., concurring); McDonald, 561 U.S. at 786. 

8 See, e.g., Heller, 554 U.S. at 626–27, 627 n.26; Rahimi, 144 

S. Ct. at 1902; Bruen, 597 U.S. at 364 (2020) (Alito, J., 

concurring); McDonald, 561 U.S. at 786.

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5

But the government’s historical analogues show that 

Congress has the power only to suspend the right to possess 

firearms—not to de facto permanently remove it. 9 The 

9

 The only analogue that the Government identifies for 

permanent disarmament is capital punishment. Historical 

punishment of felonies with execution is an imperfect 

analogue, as § 922(g)(1) is not a punishment but rather a 

disability imposed because of a prior conviction. See Beecham 

v. United States, 511 U.S. 368, 371 (1994) (“Section 922(g) 

imposes a disability on people who “ha[ve] been convicted.”); 

Padilla v. Kentucky, 559 U.S. 356, 376 (2010) (listing 

“ineligibility to possess firearms” as a consequence of 

conviction). Treating § 922(g)(1) as a form of punishment 

would raise serious constitutional questions when the plaintiff, 

like Range, was convicted only in state court. This is because 

Congress lacks authority to impose a punishment for a state 

crime. See United States v. Lanza, 260 U.S. 377, 382 (1922) 

(“[E]ach government in determining what shall be an offense 

against its peace and dignity is exercising its own sovereignty, 

not that of the other. For it to do so would crumble the 

foundations of our system of dual sovereigns, not to mention 

flout our constitutional prohibition on punishing the same 

offense twice.”). This distinction is important. Historical 

analogues presented in this context disarmed within the bounds 

of a criminal sentence—but a § 922(g)(1) disability is a de facto 

permanent disarmament in most states. See 50-State 

Comparison: Loss & Restoraiton of Civil / Firearms Rights, 

RESTORATION OF RTS. PROJ. (available at 

https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/chart-1-

loss-and-restoration-ofcivil-rights-and-firearms-privileges/)

(last accessed Nov. 21, 2024). Because Founding-era felons 

regained their rights when (or if) they completed their sentence, 

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6

government offers two types of historical analogues to support 

the duration of 922(g)(1)’s disarmament: 1) statutes that 

disarmed categories of people believed to pose a danger of 

firearm misuse; and 2) statutes punishing—and incidentally 

disarming—those convicted of committing historicalequivalents to modern felonies. For the first category, once the 

government’s justification for disarmament no longer applied 

to an individual—whether at the end of a criminal sentence, 

upon an individualized determination of a judge or other 

authority, or as part of a broader reinstatement of civil rights—

the right to possess firearms always had the potential of being

restored.

10

 Thus, while these proposed historical analogues do 

these analogues do not in and of themselves support the 

necessity of disarmament once a perceived threat to society has 

passed. See Kanter v. Barr, 919 F.3d 437, 461 (7th Cir. 2019) 

(Barrett, J., dissenting) (describing the general pitfalls of 

analogies to capital punishment, and noting that felons serving 

a term of years had their rights “suspended but not destroyed.”)

(abrogated by Bruen, 597 U.S. at 1). This conclusion is 

supported by our general understanding that individuals 

possess limited civil rights while serving their sentence, but

that those rights may be restored once they have served their 

time. The only permanent loss of a fundamental constitutional 

right that may continue as a collateral consequence of criminal 

conviction— the loss of the right to vote—required an express 

sanction in the Constitution. See Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 

U.S. 24, 54 (1974) (“The exclusion of felons from the vote has 

an affirmative sanction in [§] 2 of the Fourteenth 

Amendment.”). 

10

 For example, the nineteenth century statutes disarming 

children, the mentally ill, “vagrants”, and intoxicated persons 

were necessarily temporary in nature as a child could age out 

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7

support a principle of temporary categorical bans, they are not 

wholly “relevantly similar” to § 922(g)(1) in “how [they] 

burden the Second Amendment right” because the disability 

imposed by § 922(g)(1) is de facto permanent.11 

of the ban, a mentally ill person could receive treatment, a 

“vagrant” could be housed, and an intoxicated person could 

become sober. See, supra n.4; see also, Resolution of Mar. 13, 

1776, in Journal of the Provincial Congress of South Carolina, 

1776, at 77–78 (1776) (permitting restoration of arms to “any 

person who . . . shall convince the Committee aforesaid, that 

he sincerely desires to join in support to the American cause”); 

Mass. Gen. Laws 484 (1776) (permitting disarmed loyalists to 

restore their right to possess arms upon a committee or court 

order); Duarte, 101 F.4th at 683 (describing Revolution-era 

statutes permitting Loyalists to keep weapons “once they 

showed ‘satisfactory reasons’ for needing weapons or ‘by the 

order of” colonial committees’”). Many statutes included an 

internal safety valve permitting individuals to 

contemporaneously restore their right to possess firearms, 

including by swearing loyalty oaths, e.g., The Acts of the 

General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 193 

(1782) (A 1779 Act amending a 1778 law disarming Loyalists, 

to permit those who had taken an oath of allegiance to rearm 

themselves.), or putting their use of firearms at surety. See 

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1899 (discussing history of surety laws as 

a form of “preventative justice”). Meanwhile, felonies at 

common law that were punishable by forfeiture of property did 

not preclude offenders from purchasing new firearms after they 

had forfeited their old arms. E.g., id. at 1901; United States v. 

Moore, 111 F.4th 266, 269 (3rd Cir. 2024).

11 See Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1901 (emphasis added) (quoting 

Bruen, 597 U.S. at 30). 

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8

The government identifies a second set of historical 

analogues to support the de facto permanence of § 922(g)(1) 

disarmament—historic punishments for serious offenses. For 

convicted offenders, disarmament was often limited to the 

duration of their actual imprisonment. In practice then, the 

maximum possible period of disarmament contemplated by 

legislatures was frequently the maximum possible period of 

imprisonment. While that may have been equivalent to 

permanent disarmament for some offenses, it was not for all 

and thus would not support permanent disarmament.

In short, the government’s two strands of analogues 

establish a historic principle of imprisoning (and thereby 

disarming) in response to a felony conviction for a period of 

time that depended on the offense committed, as well as 

temporarily disarming categories of people that a legislature 

deemed to pose a danger of firearm misuse. Together, these 

two principles reflect that felons can be disarmed under § 

922(g)(1) because, as a function of their conviction, Congress 

has found them to pose a danger of misuse. The remaining 

question is how long felons’ Second Amendment rights may 

constitutionally be burdened pursuant to these principles.12 

12 This is the only point of disagreement between the views set 

forth here and those set forth by Judge Krause in her 

concurrence. We agree that § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as 

applied to all offenders that meet its statutory criteria, that 

those offenders must have an opportunity at some point to 

show that they should no longer be disarmed, and that they will 

remain disarmed, up to and including permanently, unless and 

until they make that showing. In Judge Krause’s view, history 

supports allowing the offender to seek that opportunity as early 

as the conclusion of his actual sentence, whereas I would not 

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9

I conclude that when disarmament is purely based on 

felon status (not an individualized assessment of danger to 

others), an indicator of the power to regulate is the maximum 

penalty for the offense of conviction. This conclusion is 

consistent with the historic tradition of disarmaments that are 

limited in duration.

13

 Because it is based upon legislatures’ 

assessments of the danger posed to society by an offense,

14 it is

allow it until after the duration of the maximum sentence 

available for the conviction had passed. Thus, Judge Krause 

does not join in the durational limit I adopt in the next 

paragraph above the line or in notes 17 and 20.

13

 I note that we should not assume “that founding-era 

legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate.” Id. 

at 1925 (Barrett, J., concurring); Antonyuk v. James, 120 F.4th 

941, 969 (2d Cir. 2024) (“Legislatures past and present have 

not generally legislated to their constitutional limits.”). Here, 

however, Congress’s de facto permanent ban reflects an intent 

to maximally exercise the power to regulate and disarm all 

felons for the full period constitutionally permitted. Further, 

while I have noted above that sentencing alone is an imperfect 

analogue for disarmament, Rahimi indicates that when historic 

analogues establish a regulatory tradition of responding to a 

particular threat of firearm misuse (the “why”) with 

disarmament (the “how”), the imposition of imprisonment can 

inform our understanding of the scope of the historic principle 

asserted by the government. See Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1902

(counseling that sentencing is relevant in analyzing the 

contours of Congress’s power to disarm because the greater 

penalty of imprisonment can be interpreted to include the lesser 

penalty of disarmament.) 

14

 While this period is not a constitutional limit that has 

previously been spelled out, I consider it to be a reasonable 

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10

also consistent with the Second Amendment’s protections 

against unfettered legislative discretion in disarming “the 

people.”

15 This approach also aligns with the Supreme Court’s 

repeated statements that felon bans are presumptively lawful.16

Range’s success will likely open the floodgates for 

similar pre-enforcement challenges. These Bruen challenges 

are a costly, time-consuming solution for the fact-specific 

determination of whether an individual still presents a threat of 

public injury. Cabining the timeframe during which felons may 

be disarmed will allow courts and individuals alike to readily 

assess when rearmament is permitted,17 obviating a need for 

estimation of the period during which an offender might be 

disarmed based solely on his status as a felon. The duration 

would of course also depend on the offender being able to 

demonstrate that he did not present a risk of danger to the 

public. In computing the period in a situation where there were 

multiple offenses, the duration would depend on whether the 

sentences for the offenses were imposed concurrently or 

consecutively. 

15

 Id. at 1946 (Thomas, J. dissenting) (discriminatory 

disarmaments “warn that when majoritarian interests alone 

dictate who is ‘dangerous,’ and thus can be disarmed, 

disfavored groups become easy prey.”). 

16 See supra, n.8.

17 For example, while an offender convicted of a death-eligible 

crime may be permanently disarmed, an offender, like Range, 

who is convicted of an offense punishable by a maximum term 

of imprisonment of five years, may be disarmed for five years 

from the date his sentence is imposed before he has the 

opportunity to show that he does not pose a danger to the public 

and should have his rights restored.

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11

assessing each modern offense individually and comparing it 

against Founding-era analogues on a case-by-case basis.18 

Range long ago completed the punishment that 

Pennsylvania deemed appropriate for his crime: three years of 

probation, a $100 fine, $288.29 in costs and $2,458 in 

restitution. The statutory maximum punishment for his 

offense—five years—has long passed, and he has shown, 

through years of good behavior, that he does not present a 

threat to the public. Congress’s justification for suspending his 

ability to possess a firearm no longer applies. The Second 

Amendment requires restoration of his rights. He should be 

permitted to petition for restoration upon a showing that his 

maximum sentence has expired and that he would not present 

18

 Indeed, the establishment of fixed criteria for the 

reinstatement of Second Amendment rights may induce 

Congress to reverse its position on funding § 925(c). It may 

also enable the Department of Justice to establish a procedure 

for reviewing petitions for restoration of rights, as well as 

providing a possible path to restoration prior to the expiration 

of a convicted offender’s maximum sentence if that maximum 

sentence is unduly extended. On the other hand, once an 

offender’s maximum sentence expires, that individual would 

still need to comply with state permitting schemes to rearm, 

thereby preserving states’ ability to address situations where 

restoration may be inappropriate.

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12

a risk of danger to the public if his gun rights were restored.19 

For these reasons, I respectfully concur in the judgment.20

19 We do not share our dissenting colleagues’ concerns that our 

proposal here conflicts with Congress’s pre-identified method 

of rearmament, through § 925(c). See Dissent at 8 n.7. Our 

proposal provides a method for the district courts to determine 

the constitutionality of §922(g)(1), as applied to individual 

offenders. Determining the limits of statutes’ constitutionality 

has long been the province of the courts, and we do not 

encroach on Congress’s power by doing so here. See Marbury 

v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 180 (1803).

20

 Judge Chung concurs because she does not believe Judge 

Roth’s opinion is inconsistent with the majority approach and 

because, in her view, the constitutional outer limit under Bruen

of the power to disarm felons like Range (e.g., those falling 

into the third category identified in Williams, 113 F.4th at 659) 

is coextensive with the maximum penalty for the offense of 

conviction. This is because, in her view, it is historically the 

longest period an individual could have been disarmed based 

on felon status alone. While Founding-era legislatures did not 

maximally exercise that authority to disarm in this manner, 

Judge Chung agrees with Judge Roth that the § 922(g)(1) 

statutory scheme demonstrates that Congress was taking a 

maximalist approach towards disarmament in enacting it. As a 

practical matter, Judge Chung’s view would mean that the 

disability is removed automatically and rearmament would be 

subject to state permitting schemes. Thus, she does not join 

those portions of Judge Roth’s opinion concluding otherwise.

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1

SHWARTZ, Circuit Judge, dissenting, with whom

RESTREPO, Circuit Judge, joins.

Today, the Majority of our Court has again decided that 

an individual convicted of fraud cannot be barred from 

possessing a firearm. While the Majority states that its opinion

is narrow, the analytical framework it applies to reach its 

conclusion could be read to render most, if not all, felon bans 

unconstitutional. However, the Supreme Court has reiterated

that such bans are presumptively lawful, see United States v. 

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. 1889, 1902 (2024), and because there is a 

historical basis for them, I respectfully dissent.

In New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 

U.S. 1 (2022), the Supreme Court set forth a history-based 

framework for deciding whether a firearm regulation is 

constitutional under the Second Amendment. Courts must now 

examine whether the “regulation [being reviewed] is part of the 

historical tradition that delimits the outer bounds of the right to 

keep and bear arms.” Id. at 19. To make this determination, a 

court must decide whether the challenger or conduct at issue is

protected by the Second Amendment and, if so, whether the 

Government has presented “relevantly similar” historical 

analogues to justify the restriction. See id. at 24, 29; see also

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 (same).

The Majority’s analysis is inconsistent with the 

Supreme Court’s jurisprudence and has far-reaching 

consequences. First, the Majority downplays the Supreme 

Court’s consistent admonishment that felon bans are 

“longstanding” and “presumptively lawful.” District of 

Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 626-27 & n.26 (2008); 

McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 786 (2010). In 

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2

Heller and McDonald, the Supreme Court stated that felon 

bans are consistent with our historical tradition. Heller, 554 

U.S. at 626-27; McDonald, 561 U.S. at 786. More recently, 

majorities of the Court have reiterated that felon bans are

presumptively lawful, and notably did so, respectively, in (1) 

the very case (Bruen) that explicitly requires courts to find 

historical support for every firearm regulation, see Bruen, 597 

U.S. at 17; and (2) in a case (Rahimi) that upheld a firearm 

restriction after applying Bruen’s history and tradition test, see

Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1902; see also Bruen, 597 U.S. at 72 

(Alito, J., concurring) (explaining that Bruen did not “disturb[]

anything” the Court said in Heller or McDonald); id. at 81 

(Kavanaugh, J., concurring, joined by Roberts, C.J.) 

(“[N]othing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on 

longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by 

felons[.]” (first alteration in original) (quoting Heller, 554 U.S. 

at 626)); id. at 129 (Breyer, J., dissenting, joined by 

Sotomayor, J., & Kagan, J.) (“I understand the Court’s opinion 

today to cast no doubt on . . . Heller’s holding [regarding 

longstanding prohibitions.]”); Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1902-03 

(reiterating Heller’s holding that felon bans are presumptively 

lawful and assigning error to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth 

Circuit for “requir[ing] a ‘historical twin’ rather than a 

‘historical analogue’”); id. at 1923 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) 

(noting Heller identified felon bans as a “categor[y] of 

traditional exceptions to the [Second Amendment] right”).

1

 

1 Other circuit courts have recognized the import of 

these statements. E.g., United States v. Hunt, No. 22-4525, 

2024 WL 5149611, at *4 (4th Cir. Dec. 18, 2024) (“Far from 

abandoning Heller’s language about ‘longstanding’ and 

‘presumptively lawful’ restrictions on felons possessing 

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3

These statements show that felon bans have historical roots.

2

 

See United States v. Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120, 1125-26 (8th Cir. 

2024) (upholding the constitutionality of the federal felon ban 

as applied to a non-violent drug offender based, in part, on the 

Supreme Court’s statements); see also Vincent v. Garland, 80 

F.4th 1197, 1202 (10th Cir. 2023) (giving effect to the Supreme 

Court’s prior holdings implying “that it was constitutional to 

deny firearm licenses to individuals with felony convictions”), 

cert granted, judgment vacated and remanded, 144 S. Ct. 2708 

(Mem) (2024); cf. United States v. Dubois, 94 F.4th 1284, 

firearms, the Supreme Court has repeatedly reaffirmed its 

applicability.”); United States v. Langston, 110 F.4th 408, 

420 (1st Cir. 2024) (“[T]he Supreme Court has stated 

repeatedly over sixteen years, from Heller to Rahimi, that 

felon-in-possession laws are presumptively lawful.”); United 

States v. Rambo, No. 23-13772, 2024 WL 3534730, at *2

(11th Cir. July 25, 2024) (per curiam) (unpublished) (relying 

on the Supreme Court’s repeated statements, including in 

Rahimi, about § 922(g)(1)’s presumptive validity to reject 

constitutional challenges to the law); United States v. Young, 

No. 23-10464, 2024 WL 3466607, at *8-9 (11th Cir. July 19, 

2024) (per curiam) (unpublished) (same); United States v. 

Johnson, No. 23-11885, 2024 WL 3371414, at *3 (11th Cir. 

July 11, 2024) (per curiam) (unpublished) (same).

2 The Supreme Court also recognized that other firearm 

regulations are “longstanding” and “presumptively lawful.” 

Heller, 554 U.S. at 626-27, 627 n.26. Thus, the Majority’s

willingness to devalue the Supreme Court’s observations may

have consequences on regulations beyond the status-based ban 

at issue here. 

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4

1293 (11th Cir. 2024) (noting the Supreme Court has not 

doubted the constitutionality of felon restrictions). 

Second, the Majority incorrectly discounts the 

importance of the Supreme Court’s emphasis on lawabidingness as a limitation on the Second Amendment right. 

While the Majority dismisses this language as “dicta,” Maj. 

Op. at 12, the Bruen Court’s use of the phrase fourteen times

in the majority opinion alone highlights the significance that 

this criterion played in its decision, see Bruen, 597 U.S. at 9, 

15, 26, 29-31, 33 n.8, 38, 38 & n.9, 60, 70-71; see also Jackson, 

110 F.4th at 1126 (noting Bruen’s repeated statements about a 

law-abider’s right to possess arms).

3

Indeed, the Bruen Court 

approved of certain gun regulations that included criminal 

background checks. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 38 n.9. While the

Majority suggests we are “overread[ing]” the phrase “law 

abiding,” Maj. Op. at 9, 12, there is no question that one who 

has a felony or felony-equivalent conviction could not be 

characterized as law abiding. Thus, the Supreme Court’s 

jurisprudence tells us that the right to bear arms is limited to 

law abiders, and that felon bans are presumptively lawful. 

Third, the Majority acknowledges but then disregards 

important aspects of Bruen. The Bruen Court emphasized that

its test should not be a “regulatory straightjacket” and that 

3 Although the Supreme Court recently concluded that 

an individual may not be disarmed “simply because he is not 

‘responsible[,]’” Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1903 (quoting the term 

“responsible” as used in Heller, 554 U.S. at 635, and Bruen, 

597 U.S. at 70), it is notable that the Court did not foreclose 

disarmament based on Heller and Bruen’s “law-abiding”

requirement.

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5

courts should look for a “historical analogue” to the challenged 

regulation, not a “historical twin.” 597 U.S. at 30 (emphasis 

omitted).

4

 Rahimi underscored this point, as it specifically 

reversed the Fifth Circuit for requiring the latter. 144 S. Ct. at 

1897-98, 1903 (holding that “the Second Amendment permits 

more than just those regulations identical to ones that could be 

found in 1791” and that the Court’s recent Second Amendment 

precedents “were not meant to suggest a law trapped in 

amber”). Despite these instructions, the Majority demands a 

historical twin by requiring the Government to identify a 

historical crime, including its punishment, that mirrors Bryan 

Range’s conviction. At the founding, a fraud-based crime of 

the type Range committed was considered a capital offense, 

which obviously carries with it the loss of all possessory 

rights.

5

 Folajtar v. Att’y Gen., 980 F.3d 897, 904-05 (3d Cir. 

2020) (collecting authorities). As a result, history 

demonstrates that fraudsters could lose their life, and hence 

their firearms rights. Rahimi specifically blessed this type of 

comparative reasoning. See Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1902 

(finding “permissible” “the lesser restriction of temporary 

disarmament”). Therefore, if fraud was punishable by capital 

punishment at the founding (i.e., de facto permanent 

disarmament), then under Rahimi it is appropriate to draw a 

4

Judge Krause’s comprehensive historical review is 

consistent with our understanding and supports our discussion 

of the history relevant to felon disarmament. 

5 Even some noncapital offenses resulted in life 

imprisonment and the forfeiture of the offender’s entire estate, 

which contemplates the loss of all property, including 

firearms. Act of Apr. 18, 1786, 2 Laws of the State of New 

York 253, 260–61 (1886); Act of Nov. 27, 1700, 2 Statutes at 

Large of Pennsylvania 12 (Wm. Stanley Ray ed., 1904).

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6

historical analogue to the lesser consequence of permanent 

disarmament absent the death penalty. See United States v. 

Diaz, 116 F.4th 458, 469 (5th Cir. 2024) (“[I]f capital 

punishment was permissible to respond to theft, then the lesser 

restriction of permanent disarmament that § 922(g)(1) imposes 

is also permissible.”); see also id. at 472 (“At the time of the 

Second Amendment’s ratification, those . . . guilty of certain 

crimes . . . were punished permanently and severely. And 

permanent disarmament was part of our country’s arsenal of 

available punishments at that time.”).6

The Majority also rejects the analogy to now 

unconstitutional status-based bans on Native Americans, 

Blacks, Catholics, Quakers, loyalists, and others because 

Range is not “part of a similar group today.” Maj. Op. at 20. 

Whether Range is a member of one of these groups is 

irrelevant. Rather, under Bruen, the relevant inquiry is why a 

given regulation, such as a ban based on one’s status, was 

enacted and how that regulation was implemented. Bruen, 597 

U.S. at 29; see also Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1898 (focusing the 

inquiry on the historical “reasons” for disarmament); id. at 

1925 (Barrett, J., concurring) (“‘Analogical reasoning’ under 

Bruen demands a wide[] lens: Historical regulations reveal a 

principle, not a mold.”). No matter how repugnant and 

unlawful those bans are under contemporary standards, the 

founders categorically disarmed the members of those groups 

because they were viewed as disloyal to the sovereign. Range 

v. Att’y Gen., 53 F.4th 262, 273-82 (3d Cir. 2022) (per curiam)

(collecting authorities), vacated, 56 F.4th 992 (3d Cir. 2023), 

6 Notably, Diaz’s “underlying convictions d[id] not 

inherently involve a threat of violence.” Diaz, 116 F.4th at 471

n.5.

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7

cert. granted, judgment vacated and remanded, 144 S. Ct. 2706 

(Mem) (2024); see also Jackson, 110 F.4th at 1127 (observing 

that the founding-era categorical prohibitions are relevant “in 

determining the historical understanding of the right to keep 

and bear arms”). The felon designation similarly serves as a 

proxy for disloyalty and disrespect for the sovereign and its 

laws. Such categorization is especially applicable here, where

Range’s felony involved stealing from the government, a crime 

that directly undermines the sovereign.7 Therefore, the trust 

7 The Majority also gives no weight to various 

founding-era statutory violations that led to disarmament. See, 

e.g., Act of Dec. 21, 1771, ch. 540, N.J. Laws 343–344; Act of 

Apr. 20, 1745, ch. 3, N.C. Laws 69–70; see also Range, 53 

F.4th at 281 (collecting additional authorities); cf. Rahimi, 144 

S. Ct. at 1913, 1917-19 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (giving 

weight to both pre- and post-ratification history). The Majority 

ignores that history and tradition by contending that offenders 

were only disarmed of the firearm they possessed at the time

of the violation and not barred from possessing firearms in the 

future. See Maj. Op. at 23; but see Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1897 

(noting founding-era firearm restrictions that included both 

restrictions on firearm use and bans of certain types of 

weapons). From this, the Majority asserts crime-based bans 

were not permanent (although in doing so, the Majority notably 

ignores the permanent nature of capital punishment). Maj. Op. 

at 22-23. Whether true or not, the federal felon ban under 18 

U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) is not permanent. Congress specifically 

identified ways to avoid the ban, such as by securing an 

expungement, pardon, or having one’s civil rights restored. 18 

U.S.C. § 921(a)(20). Additionally, although it is currently 

unfunded, Congress enacted 18 U.S.C. § 925(c), which allows 

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8

and loyalty reasons underlying the status-based bans imposed 

at the founding show that the bans are a relevant historical 

analogue for the present-day prohibition on felon possession.8

the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms to restore an 

individual’s right to possess a firearm upon consideration of 

the individual’s personal circumstances. See Logan v. United 

States, 552 U.S. 23, 28 n.1 (2007). 

Judge Krause thoughtfully proposes a proceeding at 

which a felon may seek to be rearmed and Judge Roth 

creatively suggests a durational limit to disarmament based on 

the maximum penalty a felon faced. Their suggestions, 

however, face at least one challenge. As stated above, 

Congress has identified the ways a felon may be rearmed and 

hence has already set the disarmament’s duration based on 

whether the felon successfully invokes one of those identified 

avenues for rearming. See generally Am. Tobacco Co. v. 

Patterson, 456 U.S. 63, 68 (1982) (“As in all cases involving 

statutory construction, our starting point must be the language 

employed by Congress,” and “[a]bsent a clearly expressed 

legislative intention to the contrary, that language must 

ordinarily be regarded as conclusive.” (internal quotation 

marks omitted)). Bound by these clearly articulated 

congressional remedies, federal courts lack the authority to 

create the remedy that my colleagues each propose.

8 To the extent the Majority relies on the Supreme 

Court’s statement in Rahimi that “our Nation’s tradition of 

firearm regulation distinguishes citizens who have been found 

to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others from 

those who have not[,]” 144 S. Ct. at 1902, that statement was 

clearly cabined by the Court’s acknowledgement that its 

analysis “start[ed] and stop[ped]” with the notion that there is 

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9

Finally, the Majority’s approach will have far-reaching 

consequences. Although the Majority states that its holding is 

“narrow” because it is limited to Range’s individual 

circumstances, Maj. Op. at 24, the only individual 

circumstance the Majority identifies is that the penalty Range 

faced differs from the penalty imposed for a similar crime at 

“ample evidence that the Second Amendment permits the 

disarmament of individuals who pose a credible threat to the 

physical safety of others[,]” id. at 1898. Therefore, Rahimi is 

best read as conclusively establishing that history and tradition 

support disarming violent individuals, but not reaching 

whether history and tradition likewise permit disarmament of

nonviolent offenders as that issue was undisputedly not before 

the Court. Indeed, the Court went out of its way to state that it 

was “not suggest[ing] that the Second Amendment prohibits 

the enactment of laws banning the possession of guns by 

categories of persons thought by a legislature to present a 

special danger of misuse[,]” id. at 1901, which today includes 

fraudsters, see 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20)(A) (excluding from the 

disarmament law those convicted of “offenses pertaining to 

antitrust violations, unfair trade practices, restraints of trade, or 

other similar offenses relating to the regulation of business 

practices,” but not persons convicted of the type of fraud at 

issue in this case). This reading of Rahimi and our history and 

tradition accord with the Court of Appeals for the Eighth 

Circuit’s recent post-Rahimi § 922(g)(1) precedent. See

Jackson, 110 F.4th at 1121-22, 1127 (noting that “Rahimi does 

not change” its previous ruling, and that the “historical record 

suggests that legislatures traditionally possessed discretion to 

disqualify . . . those who deviated from legal norms, not merely 

to address a person’s demonstrated propensity for violence”); 

accord Hunt, 2024 WL 5149611, at *6-7.

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10

the founding. As discussed above, Rahimi bolsters the view 

that such fact is irrelevant under Bruen. Thus, the Majority’s

ruling is not cabined in any way and, in fact, rejects all 

historical support for disarming non-violent felons. As a result, 

the Majority’s analytical framework leads to only one 

conclusion: there will be no, or virtually no, non-violent felony 

or felony-equivalent crime that will bar an individual from 

possessing a firearm.

9 Rahimi counsels that cannot be so,

which is why the Majority’s broad ruling is contrary to both 

the sentiments of the Supreme Court and our history.

I therefore respectfully dissent.

9 Additionally, and significantly, the Majority provides 

no way for a felon to know whether his crime of conviction 

prevents him from possessing a firearm. It also provides little 

guidance to the district courts, and it will lead to confusion and 

disuniformity as to how courts deal with factually similar 

challenges to § 922(g)(1). Cf. Rahimi, 144 S. Ct. at 1926 

(Jackson, J., concurring) (observing that “lower courts are 

struggling” with Bruen’s “history-and-tradition test”).

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