As the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether the federal government can strip gun rights from Americans who use marijuana, March For Our Lives has decided to plant its flag squarely on the side of disarmament. No one should be shocked by this. March For Our Lives has never met a gun control law it did not support, but other anti-gun groups have remained silent on the issue.
In a fundraising email circulating this month, the anti-gun group told supporters that “certain high-risk situations and behaviors shouldn’t mix with firearms” and pointed directly to United States v. Hemani, the case now before the Supreme Court. The email describes the case as involving a man who “uses drugs regularly” and warns supporters that the outcome could prevent Congress or individual states from enforcing limits on gun ownership. It then turns that argument into a donation pitch. The message leaves little doubt: March For Our Lives wants the federal government to keep using marijuana consumption as a basis for denying Americans their Second Amendment rights.
You’d think the gun control group focused on Gen Z would be the one that’s okay with marijuana users owning guns, but nope! March For Our Lives sent a email today in support of the government, saying that “certain high-risk situations and behaviors shouldn’t mix with firearms.” pic.twitter.com/2ZmxrtMG6C
— Rob Romano (@2Aupdates) March 14, 2026
That puts the anti-gun group in direct opposition to the growing view that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) is constitutionally shaky when applied to non-violent marijuana users who are not actually impaired while possessing a firearm. As AmmoLand reported earlier this month, the justices appeared deeply skeptical during oral argument in Hemani, especially when the government tried to defend a broad ban untethered from actual dangerousness or present intoxication.
At the center of the case is a federal statute that makes it a felony for an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” to possess a firearm or ammunition. Because marijuana remains federally prohibited, that language has long been used to disarm otherwise peaceable Americans, including people living in states where cannabis has been legalized or decriminalized under state law. In Hemani’s case, AmmoLand reported that the government alleged regular marijuana use, but not that he was intoxicated at the moment he possessed a gun. Both the district court and the Fifth Circuit sided against the government, with the Fifth Circuit concluding that habitual or past use alone is not enough.
That is the key point March For Our Lives either does not understand or does not care to understand. The issue is not whether somebody actively impaired should be handling firearms. Gun owners already know that recklessness is reckless, whether it involves alcohol, marijuana, or anything else.
The real issue is whether the federal government can impose a categorical civil-rights disability on millions of Americans based on a vague and elastic standard that sweeps far beyond any showing of actual danger.
And that is where the anti-gun movement always seems to end up. It starts with slogans about “safety,” but it quickly becomes a defense of total disarmament. The principle is simple enough: if the government can label you risky, the government can strip your rights. Today, the target is marijuana users. Tomorrow, it could be anyone else who falls outside whatever cultural or political line the gun-control lobby wants to draw.
That is also what makes the March For Our Lives email so revealing. Rather than grapple with the obvious constitutional problem in treating marijuana users as a prohibited class, the group falls back on the familiar language of fear. It lumps together “high-risk situations and behaviors,” blurs distinctions between addiction and occasional use, and asks supporters to fund the effort. Not once is a serious constitutional argument made. It is a political appeal built around the assumption that the right to keep and bear arms should belong only to people approved by anti-gun activists and federal regulators.
The Supreme Court’s questioning in Hemani suggests several justices may not be willing to go along with that theory. AmmoLand’s review of the oral argument noted that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett appeared particularly skeptical of the government’s attempt to analogize modern marijuana users to historical “habitual drunkards,” while other justices pressed the government on whether it had actually shown marijuana users as a class to be sufficiently dangerous to justify disarmament.
That skepticism matters because the government’s position is far broader than many Americans realize. This is not limited to violent offenders. The government’s position in Hemani was that an illegal user of any substance should be stripped of their rights. It reaches people who have committed no violent act, who are not alleged to have threatened anyone, and who may be fully lawful under state marijuana regimes.
March For Our Lives is backing the continued use of federal law to deny a constitutional right to a class of Americans based not on violence, not on due process, and not on any individualized finding of dangerousness, but on a status offense tied to a broken and contradictory drug policy.
For years, gun-control organizations have insisted they support “common sense” restrictions. There is nothing common-sense about telling a peaceable adult in a state with legalized marijuana that he can exercise one freedom or another, but not both. There is nothing principled about treating a right as expendable whenever federal bureaucrats can attach the label “unlawful user.” And there is certainly nothing pro-liberty about fundraising off the idea that the government should keep broad power to disarm people who have harmed no one.
If Hemani results in a ruling that narrows or strikes down this application of § 922(g)(3), it will not be a win for lawlessness. It will be a win for the Constitution and a reminder that fundamental rights do not disappear just because the political class finds a new category of citizen it wants to sideline.
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