Key Takeaways
- The Washington Supreme Court ruled that repeat DUI convictions can strip Second Amendment rights, regardless of firearm involvement.
- In McLellan v. Brown, the court upheld a 2023 law barring firearm possession for individuals with multiple DUI convictions.
- The majority opinion did not require individual assessments, allowing disarmament based on conviction categories alone.
- Justice Whitener dissented, arguing that DUI is nonviolent and the law violates the Second Amendment.
- The ruling could set a precedent for further erosion of gun rights, as it targets categories of offenders without individualized analysis.
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OLYMPIA, WASH. — The Washington Supreme Court ruled June 11 that the state can strip your Second Amendment rights over repeat drunk driving convictions, even when no firearm was ever involved in the offense.
In McLellan v. Brown, the court upheld RCW 9.41.040, a 2023 law that temporarily bars anyone convicted twice within seven years of DUI from possessing a firearm. The justices reversed the trial court, which had let the challenge move forward, and ordered judgment entered for the State.
Geoffrey McLellan and Jackson Holloway brought the case. McLellan had three DUI convictions in seven years. Holloway had two. Both applied for concealed carry permits. Both were denied under the statute.
Neither man used a gun in any of those offenses. Neither was found individually dangerous. The court decided it did not need that finding.
Writing for the majority, Justice González held the law fits the nation’s historical tradition of disarming groups the legislature considers a special danger. The court pointed to old restrictions on serious offenders and on people who misuse alcohol.
The key move is what the majority did not require. It said the state does not need an individualized assessment of each person. A category of conviction is enough. The court called the Second Amendment “neither a regulatory straightjacket nor a regulatory blank check.”
That reasoning should concern every gun owner. It treats a fundamental civil right as something the legislature can switch off for an entire class of people based on a prediction about what they might do someday.
Under the statute, people disarmed this way can petition to restore their rights after five years of law-abiding behavior. Five years without a firearm, over a crime that never involved one.
Justice Whitener dissented, and got it right. She explained that the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Rahimi allows temporary disarmament only when a court finds a credible threat of physical violence to another person. A DUI is dangerous. It is not violent.
She noted that Washington law itself classifies DUI as a serious traffic offense, not a violent crime. The historical surety and affray laws the majority leaned on targeted people who actually threatened others with weapons, not nonviolent offenders.
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Whitener called the law “an outlier” that violates the Second Amendment. She would have struck it down.
This is how a right gets hollowed out. Not all at once, but one “dangerous category” at a time. Today it is repeat DUIs. The logic the majority adopted has no obvious stopping point.
The respondents can still seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court, which has not directly decided whether nonviolent offenders can be disarmed by category. I will be tracking where this goes.
