DRUG USERS AND GUN RIGHTS

Justices will weigh whether 'habitual' lawbreakers should be able to keep firearms.

- BY DAVID G. SAVAGE

J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE Associated Press THE SUPREME COURT will probably hear arguments in U.S. vs. Hemani early next year. The Trump administration contends addicts and "habitual users of illegal drugs" should be prohibited from having guns.

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide if "habitual drug users" should lose their gun rights under the 2nd Amendment.

The Trump administration is defending a federal gun control law dating to 1968 and challenging the rulings of two conservative appeals courts that struck down the ban on gun possession by any "unlawful user" of illegal drugs, including marijuana.

President Trump's solicitor general, D. John Sauer, described the right to keep and bear arms as "fundamental... and essential to ordered liberty." If this right were restricted unduly, he told the court, it would "present a grave threat to Americans' most cherished freedoms."

But there are "narrow circumstances" that call for limiting gun rights, he said. Well-armed drug addicts "present unique dangers to society especially because they pose a grave risk of armed, hostile encounters with police officers while impaired," he said.

UCLA law professor Adam Winkler said the administration's stand is not entirely surprising. "Gun cases sometimes pose a dilemma for law-and-order conservatives," he said.

He noted that last year, the Supreme Court rejected a 2nd Amendment claim from a Texas man who was charged with domestic violence.