December 19, 2025
(WASHINGTON) With the Supreme Court considering more gun cases this term that risk greatly restricting governmental authority to protect public safety, Global Action on Gun Violence (GAGV) is filing amicus briefs that launch a frontal attack on the Court’s recent extreme Second Amendment rulings. In its amicus brief in U.S. v. Hemani, a marijuana user’s challenge to the federal ban on possession by drug abusers, GAGV argues that the Court should overrule both the Heller decision that overturned the two centuries-old militia-focused reading of the Second Amendment, and the extreme Bruen decision––which requires courts to play historian and only approve laws that are sufficiently analogous to laws in place hundreds of years ago. GAGV asks the Court to reinstate the test unanimously applied by the federal courts of appeals pre-Bruen, which allowed courts to balance Second Amendment rights with the government’s interest in public safety. GAGV’s brief was authored by Jonathan Lowy and Jake Meiseles of GAGV, and Jonathan D. Polkes, Adam B. Banks, Tania C. Matsuoka, Gordon-Alexander Wille, Jacob Ruvalcaba, Ammar Inayatali, and Gaddiel Rodriguez of White & Case LLP.
GAGV president and founder Jonathan Lowy said, “At a moment when gun violence has reached historic levels in the United States and has contributed to instability beyond its borders, the Court’s recent Second Amendment decisions are not just wrong, but they present grave risks to public safety; AR-15s are not muskets, and America’s 21st century gun crisis cannot be solved with 18th century solutions. Worse, the Court has forced judges to play amateur historians, a job they are not trained for.
Lowy continued: “Bruen’s history-only test is unworkable in practice, and produces inconsistent results and uncertainty for legislatures, law enforcement, and the public. To confront the nation’s gun violence crisis and remain faithful to the Constitution’s original meaning, this Court should abandon the flawed reasoning of Heller and Bruen and restore a Second Amendment jurisprudence that allows governments to enact the firearm regulations their citizens deem necessary.”
GAGV’s brief makes the case that the Supreme Court’s rulings in Heller and Bruen are wrongly decided, threaten public safety, and have proved to be unworkable in practice, as evidenced by the evolving history of drug regulation in the United States. The absence of drug regulation in the 18th and 19th centuries gave way to extensive regulation during much of the 20th century, followed by ongoing legalization of marijuana in the 21st century—demonstrating why constitutional analysis cannot rest on selective historical snapshots, but must account for prevailing understandings of public safety and the government’s longstanding authority to respond to changing societal conditions.
GAGV’s brief contends:
- The Bruen test erroneously assumes that 18th and 19th century legislatures exercised the full extent of their constitutional powers; ignores the established historical tradition allowing legislatures to limit all manner of rights to protect public safety; and forces judges to play amateur historians, which they cannot effectively do.
- Laws regulating firearm possession by drug users highlights the problem with a myopic focus on 18th and 19th century laws, as Bruen does not allow courts to consider that drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, and heroin, were largely unregulated prior to the 20th century, became subject to extensive regulation in the 20th century, and marijuana has recently been legalized in many states as conceptions of public safety and drug use changed.
- The Court should return to the post-Heller framework applied by the courts of appeals, under which the federal prohibition on firearm possession by habitual drug users should be upheld, while allowing courts to consider whether that prohibition warrants different treatment with respect to marijuana users.
About Global Action on Gun Violence
Global Action on Gun Violence was founded August 31, 2022, as a non-profit organization dedicated to ending gun violence in the U.S. and throughout the world, using litigation, human rights, advocacy and messaging. GAGV work includes representing the Government of Mexico in anti-gun trafficking litigation, acting as foreign legal counsel in a Canadian gun lawsuit, and active in the United Nations, Organization of American States and other international bodies. GAGV’s President, Jon Lowy, has litigated Second Amendment and other gun cases for over 25 years.
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