UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. JAMES GOULD
No. 24-4192
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
July 29, 2025
PUBLISHED
Argued: December 12, 2024
Decided: July 29, 2025
Before DIAZ, Chief Judge, and HEYTENS and BENJAMIN, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Chief Judge Diaz wrote the opinion, in which Judge Heytens and Judge Benjamin joined.
ARGUED: Lex A. Coleman, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. Gabriel Caleb Price, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Wesley P. Page, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne, Appellate Counsel, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. William S. Thompson, United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee.
James Gould pleaded guilty to violating
We disagree and affirm Gould‘s conviction.
I.
A.
Gould was involuntarily committed to mental health facilities four times between May 2016 and July 2019. In February 2022, police found Gould in his West Virginia home with a twelve-gauge shotgun.
A grand jury indicted him on one count of violating
Shortly after Gould‘s indictment, the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass‘n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). Bruen changed the framework by which we analyze Second Amendment challenges. See Md. Shall Issue, Inc. v. Moore, 116 F.4th 211, 218-19 (4th Cir. 2024) (en banc), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 1049 (2025).
Gould moved to dismiss his indictment. He argued that
Gould then changed his plea to guilty.2 The district court sentenced him to time served and three years of supervised release.
This appeal followed.
We begin with a brief historical primer on
1.
The statute has its origins in the Gun Control Act of 1968. Its original iteration criminalized shipping or transporting firearms or ammunition in interstate commerce by those who had been adjudicated mentally incompetent or committed to a mental institution.
Today,
A formal commitment of a person to a mental institution by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority. The term includes a commitment to a mental institution involuntarily. The term includes commitment for mental defectiveness or mental illness. It also includes commitments for other reasons, such as for drug use. The term does not include a person in a mental institution for observation or a voluntary admission to a mental institution.
2.
Previously, one could petition the Attorney General for relief from the ban by showing that he or she “will not be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety and that the granting of the relief would not be contrary to the public interest.”
Instead, Congress has permitted states that meet certain requirements to grant relief from the statute‘s firearm ban. See
II.
Although we review Gould‘s constitutional challenge de novo, United States v. Collins, 982 F.3d 236, 243 (4th Cir. 2020), Gould must still clear a high hurdle. That‘s because he brings a facial challenge, “the most difficult challenge to mount successfully.” United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987).
To succeed, Gould must “establish that no set of circumstances exists under which [
III.
A.
The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be
But the right isn‘t unlimited. As Heller described it, “[f]rom Blackstone through the 19th-century cases, commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.” Id. at 626.
As an еxample, the Court noted that “nothing in [its] opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.” Id. These “presumptively lawful regulatory measures,” id. at 627 n.26, also include laws barring the carrying of firearms in “sensitive places” and “laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” id. at 626-27.
The government asks us to decide Gould‘s case based on Heller‘s dictum that laws disarming the mentally ill are presumptively lawful.7 And it‘s true that we “routinely afford substantial, if not controlling deference to dicta from the Supreme Court,” Manning
Far from enfeebling its dictum, for the lаst fifteen years the Supreme Court has reiterated the presumptive validity of limitations on the right to keep and bear arms for the mentally ill. McDonald v. City of Chicago, 561 U.S. 742, 786 (2010) (plurality opinion) (“We repeat [Heller‘s] assurances [about prohibitions on the possession of firearms by the mentally ill] here.“); Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 699 (”Heller never established a categorical rule that the Constitution prohibits regulations that forbid firearm possession in the home. In fact, [Heller] stated that many such prohibitions, like those on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, are presumptively lawful.” (cleaned up)).
We recently explained that the Heller‘s dictum is consistent with our pre-Bruen precedent, which held that
Even so, the issue is not so straightforward. For one thing,
The two aren‘t synonymous. A person who was involuntarily committed for a mental illness and has recovered would still be swept up within the ambit of
An additional complication is what to make of the term “mentally ill.” Is it meant to capture all who‘ve ever been prescribed an antidepressant? What about those who, at some point in their lives, have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or any one of scores of discrete conditions? See Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed. 2013). And how severe must the mental illness have been to be denied the protections of the Second Amendment? Difficulties abound.9
We turn now to that analysis, with our historian caps on, as dictated by Bruen.
B.
Recall that Bruen‘s analysis proceeds in two steps. First, “[w]hen the Second Amendment‘s plain text covers an individual‘s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24. If it does, the second step requires “[t]he government [to] justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation‘s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id. (emphasis added).
While we haven‘t shied away from deciding challenges at Bruen‘s first step, e.g., Price, 111 F.4th at 398; Bianchi v. Brown, 111 F.4th 438, 452-53 (4th Cir. 2024) (en banc), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 1534 (2025), we won‘t do so here. Section 922(g)(4) bars an individual who is otherwise law-abiding from possessing a weapon in common use for a common purpose. The conduct the statute prohibits is therefore covered by the Second Amendment‘s plain text and thus is presumptively protected.
On to Bruen‘s second step. Bruen jettisoned an interest-balancing test in favor of one focused on the historical understanding of the scope and limitations of the right to keep and bear arms. But it also recognized that, in conducting that analysis, courts may need to reason by analogy to modern laws that deal with modern problems that the Founders didn‘t anticipate. Bruen, 597 U.S. at 28-29. And to prevail, the government need not show a
The Court‘s decision in United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024) is helpful here. Rahimi challenged
Rahimi never identified a historical law specifically disarming those who posed a threat to an intimate partner or child. Yet it still found the challenged statute constitutional based on the history of (1) surety laws, which required individuals found by a magistrate to pose a threat of future misbehavior, including spousal abuse, to post a bond or be jailed, and (2) “going armed” laws, which disarmed and imprisoned those who used arms to terrify the public. Id. at 694-98.
And the Court upheld the statute‘s constitutionality even though it was “by no means identical to these founding era regimes.” Id. at 698. It was enough that the statute‘s “prohibition on the possession of firearms by those found by a court to present a threat to others fit[] neatly within the tradition the surety and going armed laws represent.” Id. (emphasis added).
The “how” here is disarmament, on pain of incarceration. As for the “why,” we consider the societal problem
The statute doesn‘t bar every person who has sufferеd from mental illness from possessing a firearm. Rather, its reach is limited to those instances in which an independent “court, board, commission, or other lawful authority,”
Mental illness is a reason why someone may be deemed to be a threat to themselves or others. The underlying societal problem, however, is preventing violence by those found to pose an increased risk of danger to the community or themselves.
C.
1.
One scholar has noted that “[o]ne searches in vain through eighteenth-century records to find any laws specifically excluding the mentally ill from firearms ownership.” Carlton F.W. Larson, Four Exceptions in Search of a Theory: District of Columbia v. Heller and Judicial Ipse Dixit, 60 Hastings L.J. 1371, 1376 (2009). But that‘s largely because the mentally ill were at the time “cared for on an ad hoc and informal basis either by the family or community.” Gerald N. Grob, The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America‘s Mentally Ill 6 (1994).
In any event, the lack of historical laws specifically disarming the mentally ill isn‘t the final word. After all, laws restricting firearm ownership aren‘t “trapped in amber.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 691. And “assumptions” that “founding-era legislatures maximally exercised their power to regulate . . . are flawed.” Id. at 739-40 (Barrett J., concurring).
So we consider whether the disarmament authorized by
2.
In the years before the founding, legislatures routinely empowered “local officials to limit the freedom of ‘distracted persons’ who menaced other residents.” Grob, supra, at 16. The main response was incarceration, whether by one‘s family members or the community at large. “If violent or troublesome, even the propertied insane were without compunction locked up and chained by their families in strong-rooms, cellars, and even in flimsy outhouses.” Albert Deutsch, The Mentally Ill in America: A History of Their Care and Treatment from Colonial Times 40 (Columbia Univ. Press 2nd ed. 1949). When a family was unavailable and a town large enough, “[i]ncarceration in jail was the common solution.” Id. at 41.
But where there was neither a jail nor family available, towns found other ways to incapacitate the mentally ill. In Pennsylvania, a court ordered the construction of a small house for confining Erik Cornelissen after his father Jan complained that Erik was “bereft of his naturall Sences & is turned quyt madd and [Jan] being a poore man [was] not able to maintaine him.” The Record of Upland Court from the 14th of November, 1676, to the 14th of June, 1681, in 7 Memoirs of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania 35, 102 (Edward Armstrong ed., Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1860). And the town of Braintree, Massachusetts funded the construction of a seven-by-five-foot house for a
The powers granted to authorities to detain individuals were sometimes extensive. For example, in 1676, Massachusetts resolved that “[w]hereas, [t]here are distracted persons in some tounes, that are unruly,” “selectmen in all tounes where such persons are are hereby impowred & injoyned to take care of all such persons, that they doe not damnify others.” Deutsch, supra, at 43.
And detainment meant incarceration. In 1727, Connecticut passed a bill to build its first correctional facility, which would house “persons under distraction and unfit to go at large, whose friends do not take care for their safe confinement” alongside criminals and beggars. Id. at 52. Rhode Island did the same. Id. at 52-53.
As urbanization progressed, legislatures became more active. The first hospital in the colonies, opened in Philadelphia in the 1750s, was created with a plea to the Pennsylvania Assembly that “Lunaticks . . . are a Terror to their Neighbours, who are daily apprehensive of the Violences they may commit.” Grob, supra, at 19. And Massachusetts mandated that “penal institutions accept ‘lunatics, and persons furiously mad’ whose behavior threatened the welfare of others.” Id. at 43.
These efforts extended through to the founding. Sеe Act of Feb. 9, 1788, ch. 31, 1788 N.Y. Laws 643, 645 (authorizing justices of the peace to “lock[] up in some secure place” “persons, who by lunacy or otherwise are furiously mad . . . that they may be dangerous“); Act of Dec. 24, 1792, ch. 55, in 1 Va. Stat. at Large 162, 162-63 (Shepherd
Particularly noteworthy is the relative ease by which people could be institutionalized. At the hospital in Philadelphia, “[a]ll that was necessary was for a relative, a friend—or, perhaps, an enemy—to apply to one of the managers or physicians for an order of admission.” Deutsch, supra, at 62.
This history points to two conclusions. First, at the time of the founding, and indeed for long before, governments routinely incapacitated those suffering from severe mental illness. Second, the reason for such action was that the individual was considered a threat to their community.
3.
Next, we consider the history of a legislature‘s ability to disarm people thought to be dangerous. At the outset, we note that some of the historical laws disarming categories of people based on a determination of dangerousness would (thankfully) flunk constitutional analysis today on other grounds. United States v. Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120, 1126-27 (8th Cir. 2024) (nоting that restrictions on firearms ownership based on race and religion would be impermissible today); United States v. Williams, 113 F.4th 637, 656 (6th Cir. 2024) (“Classifying people as dangerous simply because of their race or religion was wrong from the beginning and unconstitutional from 1868.“). We analyze them not to endorse their offensive aims, but to show that, at the founding, categorical disarmament of groups of people was permissible and consistent with the contemporary understanding of the Second Amendment.
Those pre-ratification laws typically targeted religious or racial minorities. The seventeenth century was a chaotic one for England. In 1689—after a civil war, the reign of the Catholic King James II, and the Glorious Revolution which enthroned the Protestant King William III—Parliament passed “An Act for the better secureing the Government by disarming Papists and reputed Papists.” 1 W. & M. c. 15 (1689).
That Act permitted any two justices of the peace to prohibit a Catholic from possessing any arms or ammunition other than as allowed by the justices. Id. § 3. But it allоwed individual Catholics to retain their arms if they swore a loyalty oath. Id. § 6.
“According to this calculus, disarming what [Parliament] saw as a troublesome group would spare England from the religious wars that had rocked the kingdom for decades.” Williams, 113 F.4th at 651. The upshot is that (1) Parliament could disarm a group of people based on the prospective threat they posed, not individually but as a class, but (2) an individualized showing that a particular person was not dangerous—here, an oath—provided relief.
Even earlier, and on this continent, colonists too disarmed groups of people.
In 1642, Puritans in Virginia asked their fellow worshippers in Massachusetts to send them ministers. Kevin Butterfield, The Puritan Experiment in Virginia, 1607-1650,
The governor of Virginia, under orders to “oppose any and all religious nonconformity,” acted quickly to silence them. Id. at 22. Local authorities reacted by taking various measures against the Puritans, including “generally disarm[ing]” them, an extreme measure given the risks of living in mid-seventeenth century colonial America. Charles Campbell, History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia 211-12 (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott & Co. 1860). Once more, a category of people was disarmed based on their perceived status as a potential threat—here, a grouр of religious nonconformists.
Fast forward a century to the French and Indian War, part of the Seven Years’ War that pitted Protestant England against Catholic France. Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania each passed legislation disarming Catholics on a class-wide basis. Joseph G.S. Greenlee, The Historical Justification for Prohibiting Dangerous Persons from Possessing Arms, 20 Wyo. L. Rev. 249, 263 (2020). Individuals could petition for restoration of their right to bear arms, see, e.g., An Act for Disarming Papists, and Reputed Papists, Refusing to Take the Oaths to the Government, ch. 4 (1756), in 7 Va. Stat. at Large 35, 38 (Hening 1820) (allowing Catholics to “be discharged of and from all disabilities аnd forfeitures” provided they swear an oath), but this relief was only prospective, and individuals had to demonstrate their loyalty post hoc.
The ratification debates reflected similar views on the reach of the Second Amendment. Heller described the Dissent of the Minority of the Convention of
Laws restricting racial grouрs’ access to arms due to a belief that its members posed a danger were also common both before and after ratification. State legislatures banned enslaved people and freedmen from possessing firearms. Range v. Att‘y Gen., 124 F.4th 218, 264-65 (3d Cir. 2024) (en banc) (Krause, J., concurring in the judgment); see also Williams, 113 F.4th at 656. Those laws stemmed from fears of armed freedman facilitating slave revolts. Joseph G.S. Greenlee, Disarming the Dangerous: The American Tradition of Firearm Prohibitions, 16 Drexel L. Rev. 1, 27 (2024). But some post-ratification laws permitted freedmen to own firearms if they could show that they were not dangerous. Williams, 113 F.4th at 656; see Range, 124 F.4th at 265-66 (Krause, J., concurring in the judgment).
In sum, history shows that legislatures had the authority, consistent with the understanding of the individual right to keep and bear arms, to disarm categories of people based on a belief that the class posed a threat of dangerousness. Hunt, 123 F.4th at 707. And when combined with the historical treatment of those who suffered from mental illness, we perceive an unambiguous history and tradition of disarming and incarcerating those whose illness made them a danger to themselves or others.
With history behind us, we return to the question presented—whether
So we focus on “situations in which [
Rahimi again does much of the work here. The Court identified three characteristics there that led it to conclude that
Start with Rahimi‘s discussion of the importance of a court finding of dangerousness. In the Mountain State, a person may be involuntarily committed because of a mental illness only upon a judicial finding (by clear and convincing evidence) that: (1) the individual is mentally ill; (2) because of the mental illness, the individual likely poses a risk to himself or others; and (3) there isn‘t a less restrictive alternative than commitment appropriate and available.
In short, the individual to be committed is afforded substantial protection against arbitrary commitment (and thus, disarmament). That‘s consistent with the history of requiring justices of the peace to find that someone was so mentally ill that they posed a danger sufficient to warrant commitment. So as in Rahimi, the fact that
Turning to Rahimi‘s temporal considerations, a West Virginian who “is prohibited from possessing a firearm pursuant to . . . provisions of federal law by virtue solely of . . . having a prior involuntary commitment to a mental institution” can petition a state circuit court to have that right restored.
Put another way, disarmament under
For example, a sister provision,
Just like stopping the use of drugs serves as a temporal stopping point (and puts the onus on the drug user to relieve the burden),
Admittedly, this case differs from Rahimi in one aspect. One consideration in Rahimi was that if a state could constitutionally imprison an individual for certain conduct,
Though we find little evidence in the historical record of keeping firearms out of the hands of people released from mental institutions in the founding era, that dearth stems from a lack of mental institutions generally during that period. But what history does reveal is that people who were mentally ill were considered dangerous when their illness posed a threat to themselves or others, and so the state could incapacitate and disarm them.
When a person today is released from a mental institution, the setting changes. But the historical justification for their disarmament, that they pose a danger, persists until they can demonstrate otherwise to a court.
Rahimi doesn‘t hold thаt a law restricting firearm use is constitutional only if the historical tradition that justified disarming someone required continuous imprisonment. The laws disarming religious and racial groups during the eighteenth century didn‘t involve, for example, locking up all Catholics. Instead, we think—consistent with the reasoning in Rahimi—that a person (like Gould) found to be dangerous because of mental illness can be disarmed until he can show that his affliction no longer renders him dangerous.
Gould makes one more argument. He claims that
Sometimes the release occurs with conditions (such as a requirement to continue outpatient treatment) and can be revoked if the individual doesn‘t comply.
It‘s not a stretch to find constitutional applications of
* * *
We emphasize the narrowness of our holding. Disarmament under
AFFIRMED