I. Circuit Courts of Appeals applying Heller, Bruen, and Rahimi have adopted different approaches to testing 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) against Second Amendment challenges. A few have interpreted the Second Amendment to allow Congress to disarm those deemed dangerous based on historical analogues to laws disarming armed rebels and suspected traitors. For its part, the Fifth Circuit has interpreted the Second Amendment as constitutional when applied to a defendant whose disqualifying conviction would have been subject to capital punishment or forfeiture of estate in or around the Founding Era. So far, the circuit courts of appeals have overlooked two important points. First, there was no Founding Era tradition of premising the right to bear arms on the absence of a criminal record. Second, all of the contemporary constitutional evidence points in the opposite direction.

The question presented is:

Whether there is an obvious and irreconcilable clash between § 922(g)(1) and the rights protected by the Second Amendment.

Whether there is an obvious and irreconcilable clash between § 922(g)(1) and the rights protected by the Second Amendment