On October 13, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit held in Williams v. Attorney General United States of America, No. 24-1091, that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), the federal felon-in-possession statute, cannot constitutionally be applied to Edward Williams, whose disqualifying record rests on drunk-driving offenses. The ruling is as-applied, and it should be read as such. But the reasoning, written by Judge Matey, supplies the clearest statement yet from a federal appellate court of what United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024), actually permits.
What Rahimi Permits and What It Does Not
When Rahimi came down, many in the gun community feared for the right. I argued the opposite then, and Williams bears me out. Rahimi upheld the disarming of a man a court had found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others. It did not hold that the government may disarm anyone it deems irresponsible. The Third Circuit says so directly:
Focusing on physical dangerousness corrects the erroneous argument, rejected in Rahimi, that only law-abiding and responsible citizens can exercise the rights protected by the Second Amendment.
It adds:
We find no history that supports disarming irresponsible people, where “responsible” is defined by the whim of the sovereign or the will of the majority.
That is the dangerousness principle. A legislature may not label conduct irresponsible and strip a citizen of a constitutional right for life.
The Court Starts Where It Should
The opinion opens by treating the Second Amendment as a real right:
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.
The method is sound. The Amendment codified a pre-existing right, and its text marks the starting point. History then reveals the limits of that right, which is how we know it never protected murder or rape. A commentator who objects that a limit is nowhere in the text has skipped half the analysis. The Third Circuit did both halves. Having distilled the historical record, it concluded that regulators may disarm “those who pose a risk of harm to civil society,” but that a restriction goes too far “if the targeted individual does not currently pose a threat of violence.”
Danger Means Danger With Firearms
The court refused to let “dangerous” expand until it consumed the right, cautioning that an overbroad definition risks operating at “such a high level of generality that it waters down the right,” and offering this illustration:
But we would be surprised to learn that senseless scootering could trigger the loss of the right to speak, or that poorly guarded chemicals could forfeit the right against unreasonable searches.
Drunk driving is reckless, and the opinion acknowledges that Williams’s conviction was consistent with the tradition of punishment. But punishing conduct and permanently disarming the offender are different things. The question is whether the conduct was punished because it correlated with future violent use of arms, and for this DUI the court found it was not.
How a Court Finds Danger
The opinion supplies district judges a workable test. They examine the elements of the predicate offense and, where needed, the charging document, plea agreement, plea colloquy, and any explicit factual finding the defendant assented to. Then comes the rule:
If the predicate offense lacks threats or violence, then the predicate crime was likely never disarmable.
That rule follows Rahimi’s own language that the right “may only be burdened once a defendant has been found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others.” Williams’s record, which rests on a 2005 conviction for driving at Pennsylvania’s highest blood-alcohol tier, contains no such finding. The opinion also records that he worked at a gun store where he handled firearms, and that ATF ran a background check on him and cleared him to work there.
The Limits of the Decision
This was an en banc court, and it was divided. Judge Matey wrote for the court, but there were separate writings, including dissents, and the opinion states no vote count. The disputes within the court concerned in part whether Williams first had to pursue relief under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c). The holding is also narrow. It does not strike down § 922(g)(1). The court decided the companion case United States v. Bost, No. 24-1719, the same day and ruled against the defendant on a threats-based predicate.
What Williams does establish is a framework. It gives lower courts a defensible line between violence and mere irresponsibility, and it comes from the Third Circuit, which covers Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware and carries great weight in this field. Rahimi was never the threat some feared. Without Rahimi, Williams is not decided this way.
This article is based on analysis by Professor Mark W. Smith, constitutional attorney and Host of the Four Boxes Diner 2nd Amendment channel. Watch the original video here. This does not constitute legal advice.