Facing federal fines or up to five years in prison, Montana resident Gabriel Metcalf deserves a thorough and fair resolution of his case. However, in the Second Amendment context, there is a troubling history of courts failing to apply Supreme Court precedent and skipping the required historical analysis. This dangerous reality puts our justice system in jeopardy and leaves American citizens like Gabriel Metcalf to deal with the life-altering consequences.
Case Background
Gabriel Metcalf lives with his mother across the street from a public elementary school in Billings, Montana. Their lives were disrupted by a stalker, prompting Gabriel to obtain a restraining order against the perpetrator. When law enforcement failed to enforce the order, Gabriel took steps to protect himself and his mother by openly carrying a firearm, hoping the stalker would recognize his ability to defend himself and stay away.
Gabriel sought to exercise his Second Amendment rights to carry his firearm for self-defense. However, that all changed when federal agents came to his home and arrested Gabriel. They claimed that he was in possession of a firearm within 1000 feet of a school, thus violating the federal restriction of possessing a firearm within a school zone.
When Gabriel’s case went to trial, the District Court concluded that historical restrictions on voter polling place restrictions were ‘relevantly similar’ to the restriction of firearm possession within a school zone. But the District Court made this decision without properly following the Supreme Court precedent set by two Supreme Court cases—Bruen and Rahimi. These cases clearly outline the proper framework that lower courts must follow when engaging in a Second Amendment analysis.
The analysis has two main steps.
First, the court must ask if the actions being challenged are covered by the Second Amendment. If they are, the court moves on to the second step.
Next, the court must check whether the law in question fits within the country’s historical tradition of firearm laws. To do this, it looks for older laws from the time of the founding that are “similar enough” in how they restrict firearms.
To decide if a modern law is “similar enough,” the Supreme Court says courts need to look at two things:
- Why the old law was created — what purpose it served.
- How it was enforced — such as how long it lasted and what the punishment was for breaking it.
These two factors help the court decide if today’s law is in line with how firearms were regulated in the past.
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In Metcalf’s case, the District Court found that because voting and education were looked at by the founders as being the root of republican government, the ‘why’ behind founding-era polling place restrictions burdened the Second Amendment was deemed relevantly similar as a historical analogue. But the District Court analysis stopped there. The court failed to properly analyze ‘how’ the polling place restrictions were applied, and what the consequences were. For example, polling place firearm restrictions lasted only as long as the voting period (typically a single day), but the school zone restrictions at issue here last indefinitely. These two time periods are far from similar. On top of that, the District Court completely failed to consider the great disparity between the penalties that Metcalf faces under the challenged statute, and the minimal penalties in place for violating the polling place restrictions.
When engaging in an historical analogue analysis, the courts must faithfully follow Supreme Court precedent and analyze the same features of the statute with regard to duration and penalty. Courts cannot simply declare that a particular issue is unprecedented in nature, so it can develop its own approach to a historical analysis and disregard ‘how’ a challenged regulation truly burdens the individual right to keep and bear arms.
What’s at Stake?
For Gabriel Metcalf, the stakes are high—federal fines and/or imprisonment for up to 5 years for exercising his constitutional rights. For the rest of Americans, if the District Court’s improper analysis of the Second Amendment is upheld it presents the danger of allowing courts to disregard Supreme Court precedent—especially when it comes to the Second Amendment.
Incomplete or improper historical analysis is not analysis and stands in direct defiance of the standards set forth by the Supreme Court. If a challenged regulation is allowed to be “relevantly similar” without fully considering the ‘why’ and ‘how’ it relates to the historical example’s burden on Second Amendment, then the Second Amendment gets treated as a second-class right. And the Supreme Court has made it abundantly clear that the “Second Amendment is not a second-class right.”
Our amicus argues that courts should not be allowed to sidestep their responsibilities under Bruen and Rahimi to perform a full historical analysis. Courts are required to fully compare both ‘why’ and ‘how’ a challenged regulation burdens the individual right to keep and bear arms by finding a proper historical analogue to show that the regulation is consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation. We ultimately want the 9th circuit to tell the District Court that they must engage in a full ‘relevantly similar’ analysis that looks at both ‘how’ and ‘why’ a challenged regulation is consistent with this nation’s history of firearms regulation. The court must find a proper analogue, or conclude that the federal statute is indeed inconsistent with this nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation. because ‘how’ the regulation burdens the Second Amendment is too dissimilar to any historical analogue.
September 2025 Case Update
On September 23, 2025, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a favorable decision in United States v. Metcalf, overturning Mr. Metcalf’s conviction for possessing a firearm in a school zone.
While the panel did rule to overturn Mr. Metcalf’s felony conviction, they avoided the Second Amendment issue in the case altogether. Instead, the court focused on the ambiguity of the law in this case and the unique underlying facts. However, the overturning of Mr. Metcalf’s felony conviction does restore his Second Amendment-protected rights.
