“Judge Frank Easterbrook, a Reagan-appointed federal appeals judge, with a long record of ruling against the Second Amendment has just ruled favorably for 2A. By applying the Supreme Court’s present-physical danger rule to an individual facing a lifetime gun ban due to a long-ago mental illness, Judge Easterbrook has broadened the scope of 2A protections. This decision is proof that Second Amendment jurisprudence is taking hold even among its skeptics. United States v. Rose is the latest stop on the incremental march restoring the right to keep and bear arms to anyone who is not, right now, a genuine threat of physical violence to themselves or to others.” – Professor Mark W. Smith, Four Boxes Diner host
A prominent federal appeals judge with a long record of ruling against Second Amendment claims has reached a legal conclusion that the gun-rights community has waited years to hear.
In United States v. Rose, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Frank Easterbrook, held that the lifetime firearms disability in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(4) — which bars anyone ever committed to a mental institution — may be constitutionally invalid as applied to someone no longer mentally ill or physically dangerous. The court vacated the dismissal of the charges against Jonathan Rose and remanded for further fact-finding.
Mr. Rose has not won his case, but the favorable-legal rule the panel appears to be leaning toward is the real story.
The Facts Behind United States v. Rose
In September 2009, Jonathan Rose was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital in Indiana; the record does not identify his diagnosis. He was released in January 2010 and was never recommitted. In 2022, Rose purchased several firearms from licensed dealers; other attempted purchases were denied after a database match flagged his 2009 commitment.
In 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Rose under § 922(g)(4) for possessing firearms after a mental-health commitment, and under § 922(a)(6) for lying on ATF Form 4473 by denying in writing the commitment ever occurred. The district court, applying Bruen’s “text first, historical-tradition second,” test dismissed the § 922(g)(4) count for lack of any evidence Rose is a present danger. The § 922(a)(6) counts survived; circuit precedent already treated a false statement to a dealer as compatible with the Second Amendment. The Biden DOJ then appealed on behalf of the federal government.
What Judge Easterbook Concluded
The district court’s key insight, which Judge Easterbrook adopted, was that Heller and McDonald’s assurance that “longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill” remain presumptively valid was never a blank check. Quoting the district court, he wrote: “The historical record does not show that people who had transient mental problems remained ineligible for life.”
The Heller and McDonald dicta, he explained, “concern people who are mentally ill” — present tense — “not people who used to be mentally ill. Judge Easterbrook continued: “Yet §922(g)(4) applies to anyone who ever was committed to a mental institution. Some people are committed but released after they recover; others are committed in error and released once the mistake is discovered. Neither set of persons is mentally ill today, but §922(g)(4) applies to both categories.”
Judge Easterbrook then turned to the government’s position directly: “The United States contends that § 922(g)(4) is valid even with respect to persons who were never dangerous or who have recovered. That approach is hard to square with Heller, McDonald, Bruen, Rahimi, Hemani, and Wolford.”
That is a remarkable sentence from Judge Easterbrook and I am happy to report consistent with what I have previously explained. After Rahimi was released, I explained in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy that Rahimi was a victory for the Second Amendment community even though Zackey Rahimi himself lost his appeal. Why? Because the decision, 8-1 with Chief Justice Roberts writing, tied lawful disarmament under § 922(g)(8) to a judicial finding that the defendant posed a present “credible threat to the physical safety of others.”
The Court’s subsequent decision in United States v. Hemani decided 9-0 by Justice Gorsuch on June 18, 2026, extended that logic, declaring § 922(g)(3) unconstitutional as applied to a casual marijuana user not proven to be currently dangerous. Wolford v. Lopez, the 6-3 public carry decision Justice Alito authored on June 25, 2026, rounds out the recent run of Second Amendment rulings that the federal government could not square with its position here in Rose. Judge Easterbrook read Rahimi and Hemani the way I have long urged they be read: physical dangerousness to yourself or to others is the key to individual disarmament, and dangerousness is assessed as of now.
A Skeptic’s Conversion, and Why It Matters More Because of Who Wrote it
I have long been critical of Judge Easterbrook’s record on the Second Amendment. A 1985 Reagan appointee, he joined Judge Diane Wood’s 2023 opinion in Bevis v. City of Naperville, which upheld Illinois’s ban on semiautomatic rifles and standard-capacity magazines. A judge with that record had no obligation to read Rahimi and Hemani as generously as he did here, and I did not expect him to. That he did is the whole point of how I understand this long-term fight for 2A rights.
We do not restore the right to keep and bear arms in a single sweeping ruling. We restore it precedent by precedent, brick by brick, step by step, until the Supreme Court’s dangerousness rule becomes so plainly binding that even 2A hostile judges must apply it. The Rose decision is that dynamic made visible — the rule now functioning as law, not a menu skeptical circuits can decline.
Remand, Not Victory— and an Important Question for the Trump DOJ
None of this means Mr. Rose walks away a free man. The Seventh Circuit vacated the dismissal and remanded for the district court to develop a record on whether Rose was, and remains, a genuine danger — dangerousness must be shown, not presumed from a sixteen-year-old hospitalization. And it matters that the losing position under review was the Biden administration’s, not necessarily the Trump DOJ position; the case was argued in 2024. On remand, the Trump Justice Department will decide how to proceed, with the chance to align its position with the Supreme Court’s own doctrine rather than regurgitate Biden’s arguments.
The timing is not incidental. The Trump DOJ has separately been rebuilding 18 U.S.C. § 925(c), the dormant mechanism for restoring firearms rights to those no longer dangerous. Separating the genuinely dangerous from the merely once-committed is the same question any functioning restoration process must answer. Rose does not resolve that effort, but I take it as confirmation that the principle is taking hold even in courtrooms least inclined to enforce it: the Constitution requires proof of present physical and violent danger before a citizen loses the right to keep and bear arms.
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About Mark W Smith
Constitutional attorney and bestselling author Mark W. Smith, host of the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment channel on YouTube, is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar. His Second Amendment scholarship has been cited by many attorneys and judges, including by attorneys in legal briefs submitted to the Supreme Court in NYSRPA v. Bruen and in U.S. v. Rahimi.
His most recent book is DISARMED: What the Ukraine War Teaches Americans about the Right to Bear Arms.
