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The National Rifle Association, Firearms Policy Coalition, and FPC Action Foundation have filed a joint amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit arguing that the federal lifetime firearm ban for nonviolent felons under 18 U.S.C. Section 922(g)(1) violates the Second Amendment.

The brief was filed on May 7, 2026 in Atkinson v. Blanche, Case No. 26-1356, an appeal from the Northern District of Illinois. The plaintiff, Patrick Atkinson, is challenging the federal prohibition on firearm possession by anyone with a felony conviction, even where the underlying offense was nonviolent. The brief was authored by Joseph G.S. Greenlee, Counsel of Record for the NRA Institute for Legislative Action.

The Core Argument

The amici brief makes a clean and historically grounded argument. Under New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the government has the burden of justifying any modern firearm regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The brief argues that the federal lifetime ban on firearm possession by nonviolent felons fails that test.

The brief states the principle directly:

“America’s historical tradition of firearm regulation allows for the disarmament of demonstrably dangerous persons, disaffected persons posing a threat to the government and persons with a proven proclivity for violence. But there is no historical tradition of disarming peaceable citizens. Rather, peaceable citizens, including nonviolent felons and other ‘unvirtuous’ persons, were expressly permitted and often required to keep and bear arms.”

Why “Presumptively Lawful” Doesn’t End the Analysis

One of the central legal points in the brief addresses a phrase often cited by lower courts to uphold the felon-in-possession statute. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court called prohibitions on firearm possession by felons “presumptively lawful.” Lower courts have repeatedly used that language to dismiss Second Amendment challenges to Section 922(g)(1) without conducting the historical analysis Bruen requires.

The amici brief argues that this approach misreads what the Supreme Court has actually said. The brief notes that Bruen specifically applied its text and history test to a regulation Heller had deemed presumptively lawful. When New York attempted to characterize its proper-cause requirement for concealed carry permits as a “sensitive place” law, the Court did not stop there. It consulted the historical record and found no historical basis for the regulation.

The brief argues the same standard applies here. “The Court has never articulated an exception for the ‘presumptively lawful’ regulations,” the brief states. Therefore, “prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons must be historically justified.”

The Historical Record on Disarmament

The bulk of the brief is a detailed historical examination of who could and could not be disarmed in colonial and founding-era America. The picture that emerges is consistent and clear. Disarmament was reserved for people considered dangerous, not for people who had broken the law nonviolently.

In colonial America, every ban on firearm possession was discriminatory, applying to Blacks, American Indians, Catholics, Puritans, and Antinomians. The brief acknowledges these laws cannot establish a constitutional tradition because both Bruen and United States v. Rahimi made clear that discriminatory laws cannot serve as historical analogues for modern regulations. But even those discriminatory laws were rooted in concerns about danger, not violation of nonviolent statutes.

In the founding era, disarmament focused on enemies of the government during armed conflict. Loyalists were disarmed during the Revolutionary War because they were taking up arms against the colonies, not because they had been convicted of nonviolent offenses. After Shays’s Rebellion, those who had borne arms against the Massachusetts government were disarmed for three years and then permitted to reclaim their firearms.

The brief details three proposals from state ratifying conventions that addressed who could be barred from possessing arms. New Hampshire’s, the only one approved by a majority of its convention, provided that “Congress shall never disarm any Citizen, unless such as are or have been in actual Rebellion.” Samuel Adams’s Massachusetts proposal would have ensured that “the said constitution be never construed to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” Pennsylvania’s “Dissent of the Minority” proposed an amendment allowing disarmament only “for crimes committed, or real danger of public injury from individuals,” and the historical record indicates this referred to violent crimes and insurrectionists.

In every case, the disarmament tradition focused on dangerousness, not nonviolent legal violations.

What “Peaceable” Meant in 1789

The brief makes a particularly strong argument from founding-era dictionaries. Heller relied on Samuel Johnson’s, Thomas Sheridan’s, and Noah Webster’s dictionaries to interpret the text of the Second Amendment. Those same dictionaries are decisive on what “peaceable” meant.

Johnson’s 1773 dictionary defined “peaceable” as “1. Free from war; free from tumult. 2. Quiet; undisturbed. 3. Not violent; not bloody. 4. Not quarrelsome; not turbulent.” Sheridan’s 1789 dictionary defined “peaceable” as “Free from war, free from tumult; quiet, undisturbed; not quarrelsome, not turbulent.” Webster’s 1828 dictionary defined “peaceable” as “Not violent, bloody or unnatural.”

Being peaceable, the brief argues, is not the same as being law-abiding. The law may be broken nonviolently. A person who commits a nonviolent offense remains peaceable in the founding-era sense and therefore retains the protection of the Second Amendment.

Nineteenth-Century Restrictions Continued the Pattern

The brief surveys 19th-century arms restrictions and finds the same pattern. Discriminatory bans on slaves and freedmen are not valid analogues. Restrictions on tramps were grounded in danger and were upheld specifically because tramps were considered “dangerous,” “a public enemy,” and “a thief, a robber, often a murderer.” Restrictions on persons of unsound mind and intoxicated persons addressed people considered unable to exercise the right safely.

Throughout the period, the brief notes that officials and commentators recognized the right of peaceable citizens to keep and bear arms. The brief quotes a 1840 source: “a free citizen, if he demeans himself peaceably, is not to be disarmed.”

Felons Were Required to Keep Arms

Perhaps the most striking historical evidence in the brief is that nonviolent offenders in the colonial and founding periods were not just permitted to own firearms after their convictions, they were required to.

The brief notes that no individual in early America was disarmed because the law they violated was classified as a felony. Upon completing their sentences, offenders not only had full Second Amendment rights, they were required by state and federal militia acts to keep and bear arms.

The federal Uniform Militia Act of 1792 included exemptions for elected officials, post officers, stage drivers, ferrymen, inspectors, pilots, and mariners. It contained no exemption based on prior incarceration or crimes committed. Freemen previously convicted of crimes virtually always possessed arms in the colonial and founding eras.

The brief also documents specific laws protecting criminals’ arms. In 1786 Massachusetts, when estate sales were held to recover funds stolen by corrupt tax collectors and sheriffs, it was forbidden to include arms in the sales. Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia all enacted laws exempting arms from civil action recoveries, which the brief notes “undoubtedly benefited some unvirtuous persons.” The federal Uniform Militia Act of 1792 specifically exempted militia arms from “all suits, distresses, executions or sales, for debt or for the payment of taxes.”

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Why This Matters for Gun Owners

The Second Amendment is a fundamental civil right, and the question of who can be permanently stripped of that right by a single conviction has implications well beyond Patrick Atkinson’s case. The federal lifetime ban under Section 922(g)(1) currently applies to anyone convicted of any crime, state or federal, punishable by more than one year in prison. That definition sweeps in tax violations, regulatory offenses, drug possession, fraud, and a wide range of other nonviolent conduct.

A person convicted of a nonviolent offense in their youth currently loses their Second Amendment rights for life under federal law. They cannot defend themselves or their families with a firearm. They cannot pass through a state where firearm possession is otherwise legal. They cannot help their spouse or children learn to shoot. The lifetime ban applies even to people who served their sentences decades ago, never reoffended, raised families, paid taxes, and reintegrated into society in every other respect.

The amici brief makes the case that this regime has no foundation in the historical tradition of the Second Amendment. The framers’ generation did not impose lifetime firearm prohibitions on people who had committed nonviolent offenses. They imposed disarmament on people who were actually dangerous, and even then, often for limited periods.

The Broader Litigation Landscape

The Atkinson case is part of a growing wave of post-Bruen challenges to Section 922(g)(1) as applied to nonviolent offenders. Federal appellate courts have split on the question. The Third Circuit, in Range v. Attorney General, ruled in favor of a man convicted of a nonviolent food stamp offense decades earlier, finding the lifetime ban unconstitutional as applied to him. Other circuits have reached different conclusions.

The Supreme Court has not yet directly addressed the application of Section 922(g)(1) to nonviolent felons under the Bruen framework, although several cert petitions on the question have been filed.

The Atkinson case offers the Seventh Circuit an opportunity to apply Bruen’s text and history test to one of the most consequential federal firearm prohibitions in modern law. If the Seventh Circuit follows the Third Circuit’s lead and rules in favor of Atkinson, the issue will likely reach the Supreme Court.

What Comes Next

The Seventh Circuit will hear argument and issue a ruling. The amici brief is one of several being filed in support of Atkinson. The federal government, represented by the Acting Attorney General and the ATF Director, will defend the application of Section 922(g)(1) to nonviolent offenders.