New Decision

 Williams v. Attorney-General of the U.S. (3rd Cir. 2026) decided that a second offense DUI conviction (which had a potential sentence of five years) is not a valid basis for disarmament:

The Second Amendment is a primary protection against tyranny, a strong bulwark securing American liberty, and an indispensable means of defending the public good. So courts testing restrictions on these “most sacred” and “necessary” rights must consider the history and tradition of firearm regulations with care and rigor.1 Edward Williams had two convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol in the early 2000s, the second of which (unbeknownst to him) triggered 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which purports to make it “unlawful” for persons convicted of “a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year” to possess firearms. Seeking to restore his rights, Williams filed for a declaratory judgment to confirm that § 922(g)(1), as applied to him, runs afoul of the Second Amendment. The District Court agreed with Williams, and we will affirm that judgment. 

This is a very detailed examination of the constitutional basis for disarmament.  It examines how even the definition of felony is full of ambiguity:

But the Justice Department’s apparent attempt to broaden discrete crimes justly punished by death to include all felonies, much less all crimes punishable by more than one year imprisonment, misses the point. The word “felony” has roots in mortal sin. But as time passed, felony’s substance was lost, as it came not to be defined by the character of the wrongdoer, but by the potential punishment. By Blackstone’s age, it was a crime punishable by death, encompassing “no less than a hundred and sixty [offenses].” 4 Blackstone *18. More recently, commentators have given up trying to apply any independent, substantive meaning to “felony,” admitting that it means whatever the legislature says it means. “[F]elony . . . has derived so many meanings from so many parts of the common law, and so many statutes in England, and has got to be used in such a vast number of different senses, that it is now impossible to know precisely in what sense we are to understand this word.” 6 Nathan Dane, General Abridgment and Digest of American Law 715 (1823).  

These sources reveal that the modern regulatory label of felony—a crime punishable by more than one year of imprisonment—is not even close to the proper “level of generality at which to define [the] historical practice.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 724 n.4 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring). It captures conduct that would have commonly justified exclusion, and a host of less significant acts. So simply pointing to Williams’s felony because it is labeled “felony” does not do. We must move to a more granular comparison, assessing Williams’s conduct against the Justice Department’s proffered analogy.  

It points to habitual drunkard laws and how irrelevant they are to this case:

Nor does the Justice Department explain “how” the habitual drunkard laws ameliorated the threat of firearm misuse in a way relevant to the operation of § 922(g)(1). As Bruen clarifies, “if earlier generations addressed the societal problem, but did so through materially different means, that . . . could be evidence that a modern regulation is unconstitutional.” 597 U.S. at 26–27. That is the case here, and why the analogy to the permanent bar in § 922(g)(1) breaks down. Most statutes capped the commitment of habitual drunkards to the state inebriate asylum, prison, or hard labor to a few months or years. Others provided for an indefinite period of incarceration, but had no indication that upon release individuals continued to forfeit their arms. Rather, once someone was “safe” to “go at large,” Act of Mar. 27, 1876, ch. 208, § 7, 1876 Va. Acts 249, they were restored to the status of a full rights-bearing citizen. See Range, 124 F.4th at 231 (“[I]n the Founding era, a felon could acquire arms after completing his sentence and reintegrating into society.”). 

I am not keen on DUI convicts possessing guns. The risk that someone so irresponsible as to drive drunk has access to guns, cars, or sharp objects, seems high. I also read that Williams' last conviction was in 2005. It appears that he has learned his lesson and reintegrated into society.