The Firearms Policy Coalition and its litigation arm aren’t buying the ATF’s latest attempt to thread the needle on the “unlawful user” definition, and they’re right to call it out. The agency’s proposed tweak still leaves the door wide open for arbitrary, post-hoc disarmament of millions of Americans who use cannabis in states where it’s legal or who have ever been caught with a joint years ago. By refusing to draw a bright constitutional line, ATF is signaling that it would rather keep the ambiguity that lets it treat everyday conduct as a lifetime disqualifier than admit the underlying statute is being stretched beyond recognition. That halfway posture isn’t a compromise; it’s an invitation for future administrations to weaponize the same vague language against whatever disfavored group is next on the list.

For the broader Second Amendment community, the comments underscore a strategic shift that’s been building since Bruen: groups like FPC are no longer content to nibble around the edges of agency rules. They’re forcing regulators to confront the fact that “unlawful user” has never been given a workable, historically grounded definition and that the current regime effectively creates a permanent class of second-class citizens whose rights vanish the moment a prosecutor or bureaucrat decides their conduct was disqualifying. If the agency refuses to fix the problem now, the next step is almost certainly litigation that tests whether the entire prohibitor can survive under the Court’s new history-and-tradition test. In other words, this isn’t just about cannabis users; it’s about whether the administrative state gets to keep moving the goalposts on who is allowed to exercise a fundamental right.