“The Supreme Court declined to disturb a ruling that freed a man disarmed for life over unpaid child support. In its silence, I read a deliberate SCOTUS strategy: spend the Court’s scarce political capital in the Second Amendment space on law-abiding Americans, not on the endless parade of bad actors who litigate Section 922(g) cases.” – Professor Mark W. Smith, Four Boxes Diner Host
The Supreme Court handed the Second Amendment a big victory by doing nothing at all. The Justices denied certiorari in United States v. Cockerham, No. 24-60401 (5th Cir. Dec. 17, 2025), declining the Justice Department’s petition to review a Fifth Circuit ruling that struck down the federal lifetime felon-in-possession ban as applied to a man whose qualifying offense was failing to pay child support.
A cert denial sets no precedent and explains nothing. But its practical effect here is unmistakable: the narrow, “text first, and then history second” ruling of potential future Supreme Court justice (now Judge) James C. Ho remains, and the federal government’s effort to defend disarmament on these facts is over.
What Judge James Ho Actually Held in the Court of Appeals
Edward Cockerham pleaded guilty under Mississippi law for failing to pay child support. He was sentenced to five years of probation, served not a single day in prison, eventually repaid the debt, and was released. Years later, he was found with a firearm and prosecuted under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1) — the statute that disarms, for life, anyone convicted of a crime punishable by more than a year’s imprisonment, whether or not he ever sees the inside of a cell.
Writing for the Fifth Circuit, Judge Ho applied the “text first, and then history second” framework of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), and United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024). His opening line set the register of the whole opinion: “The right to keep and bear arms under the Second Amendment is a fundamental civil right, comparable to other provisions of the Bill of Rights.”
The government analogized failure to pay child support to theft. Judge Ho found the analogy historically false. Further, at America’s Founding, debtors could not be permanently disarmed — they were released once the debt was paid. Because Cockerham had eliminated his debt before he was found with a firearm, the Fifth Circuit held:
So there’s no historical justification to disarm him at that moment — never mind for the rest of his life.
That is an as-applied holding to Cockerham himself, narrow by design, and exactly the kind of disciplined ruling that survives review.
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A 2A Rights Claimant Need Not Be Sympathetic, but it Sure Helps!
Here is the reality that the pro-2A community should embrace: most people who challenge § 922(g)(1) are unsympathetic.
The docket of aggrieved folks wanting to litigate under this federal gun control statute is filled with convicted felons, domestic violence defendants, and illegal aliens — claimants who, in one variation or another, present the same uncomfortable fact pattern of “a bad guy with a gun.” Cockerham is no exception. The opinion itself records that he has been charged with aggravated assault, domestic violence, drug trafficking, and stalking but those were unproven allegations. The Supreme Court cases of U.S. v Rahimi and U.S. v. Hemani further prove the point since both arose from bad facts in the § 922(g) context. Of course, although the Second Amendment should not turn on whether we like the litigant, the reality is that judges are people too and can be swayed by sympathetic or unsympathetic fact patterns.
Conserving the Court’s Political Capital in 2A Cases
This is why the denial matters beyond one defendant. The Supreme Court has, I believe, made a deliberate choice: it will not spend its limited political capital adjudicating the rights of the § 922(g) population one bad fact pattern at a time. It prefers to leave a clean circuit ruling in place and reserve its 2A-related docket for the cases that move the law for ordinary Americans — the AR-15 bans, the magazine bans, the carry restrictions imposed on people who have done nothing wrong. In other words, the Supreme Court may be more interested in deciding Second Amendment cases arising from victimless, malum prohibitum criminal statutes.
Moreover, for those individual claimants interested in attacking the loss of their 2A rights under 922(g), there is now an alternative to an expensive civil lawsuit. The restoration-of-rights mechanism in 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) — dormant since Congress defunded it in 1992, and revived in 2025 when Attorney General Pam Bondi reclaimed the authority to process petitions directly. This vehicle offers an administrative road back to one’s rights without the expense and years of federal litigation. But it is not a perfect remedy. A man like Range, convicted of a paperwork offense decades ago, should never have to petition anyone to restore a right he never should have lost. But for many, § 925(c) is now the faster path, and the Supreme Court appears content to point them toward it.
Justice Clarence Thomas Draws the Same Line in the Criminal Case of Whitton v. Florida.
The same philosophy of the Supreme Court protecting lawabiding Americans as much as criminals runs through a recent dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel Alito, in Whitton v. Dixon, 608 U.S. ___ (2026). There, the majority granted relief to a Florida death-row inmate over a minor lower-court error. Thomas objected — not out of sympathy for the criminal, but out of principle:
It is unfortunate that the Court chose to intervene at the request of a convicted murderer to correct the Eleventh Circuit’s inconsequential foot fault. What makes it even worse is that the Court does so even while it refuses to correct far more consequential errors for law-abiding citizens.
That is the through-line connecting Whitton and Cockerham. A judiciary that races to fix trivial errors for the worst offenders, while law-abiding citizens wait years for relief from plainly unconstitutional gun laws, has its priorities inverted. The cert denial in the Cockerham case is a small correction in the right direction. It is time for the courts to stop hunting for loopholes that benefit criminals and to put the constitutional rights of law-abiding Americans first.
DOJ Is Finally Fighting Hardware Bans. Now SCOTUS Needs To Step In.
About Mark W Smith
Constitutional attorney and bestselling author Mark W. Smith hosts the Four Boxes Diner Second Amendment channel on Youtube and Rumble; is a member of the U.S. Supreme Court Bar; and his Second Amendment scholarship has been cited by many attorneys and judges, including by attorneys in legal briefs submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Smith’s most recent book is ISRAEL DISARMED: What the October 7 Attack Teaches Americans about the Right to Bear Arms and he has lectured at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School, Princeton University, the Wharton School at U. Penn, and Oxford University. He is a frequent speaker at the Federalist Society’s Annual National Lawyers Convention in Washington, D.C.
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