Original article can be found here.
The National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation have taken United States v. Cordova into the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit with a hard constitutional line. Lifetime firearm prohibitions, they told the court, are reserved for people who pose a proven threat of violence. Nonviolent felons are not in that class. The groups filed their amicus brief in October 2026.
Federal criminal law still slaps a lifetime ban on firearm possession after any felony conviction. The statute does not distinguish a violent offender from a nonviolent one. It does not require the government to prove danger. It converts the conviction itself into a permanent loss of the right to keep and bear arms. The case puts that regime before the Fifth Circuit.
NRA and SAF argue that historical tradition does not support that result. Historical tradition, they told the Fifth Circuit, supports lifetime firearm prohibitions only for people who pose a proven threat of violence, not for nonviolent felons. A categorical ban on nonviolent felons falls outside that tradition. The Second Amendment is not a privilege the government restores when it feels generous.
The brief urges the Fifth Circuit to adopt a test in disarmament cases built on that distinction. Dangerousness is the question. The felony label is not. If the government cannot show that a person poses a proven threat of violence, it cannot impose a lifetime firearms ban and call the result consistent with the right to keep and bear arms.
That is constitution over statute. Congress may write a criminal code. It may not redefine the Second Amendment by attaching a lifetime disarmament to every felony on the books. Judges who treat a federal firearms ban as self-justifying have the hierarchy backward. The right predates the code. The code answers to the right.
NRA and SAF are not asking the Fifth Circuit to arm the dangerous. They are asking it to stop treating nonviolent offenders as if they were. A proven threat of violence is a constitutionally serious fact. A nonviolent felony is not. Lifetime loss of arms requires the former.
The Fifth Circuit now has the amicus brief. Its judges swore an oath to the Constitution, not to the federal criminal code. United States v. Cordova will decide whether a lifetime gun ban can still be aimed at a citizen who poses no proven threat of violence.
References
- https://saf.org/saf-nra-file-amicus-challenging-lifetime-firearms-ban-for-nonviolent-felons/
- https://www.shootingwire.com/releases/2026/10/nra-files-amicus-brief-urging-fifth-circuit-to-adopt-a-test-in-disarmament-cases-that-ensures
- https://bearingarms.com/tomknighton/2026/10/23/nra-saf-file-amicus-brief-in-challenge-to-lifetime-gun-ban-for-non-dangerous-felons-n1234231
- https://www.tampafp.com/gun-rights-groups-ask-appeals-court-to-limit-lifetime-gun-bans-to-violent-felons/
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