Comment on FR Doc # 2026-01141

I support revising Form 4473 rules on unlawful drug users to align with constitutional limits established by the Fifth Circuit in Daniels and Connelly, now affirmed by the Supreme Court's direction in Hemani. The courts have made clear: drug use frequency alone—even daily use—does not justify disarmament. What matters constitutionally is whether someone is currently intoxicated at the time of purchase or possession. Restricting rights based on past usage patterns, divorced from present incapacity, violates the Second Amendment as a status-based prohibition unsupported by rational basis review. This principle mirrors the historical application of public intoxication statutes, which required proof of actual impairment in the moment, not mere evidence of prior conduct. The same constitutional constraint applies to firearms regulation. The government may restrict rights based on present danger—current intoxication or observable incapacity—but not on speculative risk or status divorced from demonstrable incapacity. Under this framework, Form 4473 requires substantive revision. First, the unlawful user standard must be redefined to exclude individuals whose drug use, however frequent, occurs at times temporally and substantively separate from the firearms transaction. Questions targeting historical usage patterns lack constitutional foundation when the applicant is not presently impaired. Second, the form cannot be permitted to function as a prosecutorial trap, converting honest disclosure into felony exposure for conduct outside the constitutional boundary. The statute and its enforcement mechanisms must distinguish between status-based restrictions—which fail heightened scrutiny—and restrictions grounded in present dangerousness or judicial determination of unfitness. Constitutional fidelity and public safety are not in tension when enforcement targets demonstrable present danger: actual intoxication, observable incapacity, or adjudicated dangerousness. Precision in statutory application is not a limitation on regulatory authority; it is a constitutional requirement.