Americans who regularly smoke cannabis can own firearms, the Supreme Court decided on June 18. The ruling overturns a section of the Gun Control Act that forbids a person who “is an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any controlled substance’ from owning guns.

The FBI searched the Texas home of suspected drug dealer Ali Danial Hemani in 2022 and found marijuana, a small amount of cocaine, and a Glock 9 mm pistol. Hemani admitted to law enforcement that he smoked weed approximately every other day, but that he was not on drugs during the search.

He was indicted for unlawful possession of the gun, but challenged that, arguing that the wording of the statute was too vague and violated the Second Amendment.

A previous Supreme Court decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, said states can enact laws that restrict the right to bear arms, but only when those laws are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”

The government had argued that the statute in question is “analogous to founding-era laws restricting the rights of drunkards.” Hemani’s attorneys countered that the correlation is false, since “‘habitual drunkard’ laws targeted people who regularly abused alcohol, not people who regularly used it,” as with Hemani’s use of cannabis.

“The government’s claim that historical laws targeted habitual drunkards for the same reason §922(g)(3) targets unlawful users—because they regularly use intoxicants—is difficult to square with the historical record,” the majority opinion says.

Those laws were meant to target individuals so intoxicated they could not function, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote.