WSJ Opinion: Potomac Watch Marijuana and Guns at the Supreme Court / Cornyn, Paxton and a Texas Runoff
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Mar 4, 2026 
Colin Levy, Wall Street Journal editorial board member, offers legal and political perspective. Matt Continetti, WSJ columnist, provides conservative analysis. They debate whether federal gun bans for drug users square with Founding-era analogies to drunkards. They also unpack Texas primary shakeups as Cornyn and Paxton head to a GOP runoff and Tallarico wins the Democratic Senate nod.
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History Test Makes Drug-Gun Laws Hard To Fit
- The Bruen test forces courts to map modern gun restrictions to historical analogs, complicating laws that target behaviors unknown at the Founding like many controlled substances.
- Justices focused on historical rules for habitual drunkards as the closest precedent, but those analogies don't cleanly match marijuana or modern pharmaceuticals.
Illegality Versus Dangerousness Determines Scope
- The fundamental tension is whether disarmament turns on the illegality of the drug or the dangerousness of its effects, and that distinction will determine scope of the statute's reach.
- Justice Amy Coney Barrett highlighted everyday medications like Ambien and Adderall to show the law could sweep non-violent, common conduct.
Marijuana Legalization Creates Federal Limbo For Guns
- Marijuana's legal status in many states but Schedule I federal classification creates a limbo that complicates enforcement of federal firearm-disqualification rules.
- The federal ATF firearms form explicitly warns marijuana use remains unlawful under federal law despite state legalization.