Criminal Law UpdatesCan marijuana users own guns in North Carolina after United States v. Hemani? The Supreme Court decided the gun-rights vs. marijuana case on June 18, 2026, and the answer is somewhat narrower than several headlines suggest. The Court did not legalize marijuana under federal law or announce a constitutional right for every marijuana user to possess a firearm. It also did not strike down the applicable federal statute in full. Instead, the Court held that the government could not prosecute 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) based on marijuana use alone.
That distinction controls almost everything that follows. News coverage has already produced headlines suggesting the Court erased the federal ban on gun ownership by marijuana users. That is not what happened. The Court rejected the government’s effort to apply a particularly broad reading of § 922(g)(3), the federal law that prohibits firearm possession by an unlawful user of a controlled substance, to a defendant whose only proven conduct was regular marijuana use at home.
For gun owners in North Carolina, the ruling opens new constitutional arguments while leaving substantial federal exposure in place.
address attempt cases. The decision provides a blueprint for challenging a prosecutor’s burden of proof by emphasizing that an attempt to commit a crime requires a mental state (