A Second Amendment challenge from a particularly interesting non-violent felon may soon end up at the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS). Earlier this month, an En Banc panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld Steven Duarte’s conviction for possessing a firearm as a felon. Duarte is another defendant who claimed the non-violent nature of his prior convictions meant the federal prohibition is unconstitutional as applied to him. Unlike challenges from people like Brian Range, who lied about his income to get food stamps in the 1990s, or Zackey Rahimi, who was subject to a restraining order over numerous violent domestic incidents, Duarte’s case isn’t nearly as clear-cut. That’s because Duarte’s record includes offenses like drug dealing and running from police in a car. Though his crimes were non-violent, the Supreme Court may still determine his offenses make him dangerous enough to disarm. The Ninth Circuit’s ruling doesn’t seem particularly helpful in figuring out where SCOTUS might go in the case, though. Instead of trying to determine whether Duarte’s criminal record made him too dangerous to own guns, it simply found his status as a felon was enough justification. It started by citing the Supreme Court’s dicta on felons in Heller, Bruen, and Rahimi, arguing they bolstered the idea that felon gun bans are constitutional. “Together, these repeated and consistent ‘assurances’ make clear that felon-in-possession laws, like § 922(g)(1), are presumptively constitutional, demonstrating that our holding in Vongxay remains consistent with the Supreme Court’s articulation of Second Amendment rights,” Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the majority in US v. Duarte.. “Further, these ‘assurances’ recognize a historical tradition of firearm regulation that supports the categorical application of § 922(g)(1) to felons like Duarte.” It then concluded the government doesn’t need to show Duarte’s particular crimes establish that he’s individually dangerous in order to disarm him. Rather, it held the government could make that determination merely because he is a felon. “To support the application of § 922(g)(1) to Duarte, the Government proffers a variety of historical sources that evince two regulatory principles that: (1) legislatures may disarm those who have committed the most serious crimes; and (2) legislatures may categorically disarm those they deem dangerous, without an individualized determination of dangerousness,” Wardlaw wrote. “We address each in turn, and agree that either supplies a basis for the categorical application of § 922(g)(1) to felons.” However, numerous Supreme Court justices have already shown skepticism of the idea that the government can deem groups of people, even convicted criminals, as prohibited from owning guns absent some sort of dangerousness finding. In US v. Rahimi, several justices took issue with the Department of Justice’s initial argument that the government could disarm people based on the idea they were “irresponsible” or not “law-abiding.” “It seems to me that the problem with responsibility is that it’s extremely broad, and what seems irresponsible to some people might seem like, well, that’s not a big deal to others,” Roberts noted in oral arguments. Instead, SCOTUS ruled Rahimi’s disarmament could stand because