Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) announced today that it filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief with the en banc (full-court) U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Cordova, urging the court to reject an erroneous legal theory used to justify federal lifetime gun bans and recognize that Americans cannot be permanently disarmed merely because they have been convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year in prison.
FPC's brief challenges the Fifth Circuit's decision in United States v. Diaz, which reasoned that because some crimes were punishable by death at the Founding, permanently disarming people convicted of similar crimes today is constitutionally permissible. FPC argues that this deeply flawed approach has produced absurd results and bears little resemblance to the historical analysis required by the Supreme Court.
In Cordova, Peter Villa Cordova was previously convicted of possessing marijuana and evading arrest in a motor vehicle. He was not sentenced to serve a single day in prison for those offenses and completed probation years before he was found possessing a firearm. Federal prosecutors nevertheless charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), which imposes a lifetime firearm prohibition on people with qualifying convictions. A three-judge Fifth Circuit panel upheld his conviction, but the full court subsequently granted rehearing en banc and vacated the panel's decision.
Notably, Judge Andrew Oldham sharply and correctly criticized the Fifth Circuit's approach in his opinion accompanying the now-vacated panel decision, declaring that "Diaz must go."
"The government doesn't get to use the fact that colonial authorities once hanged thieves as a license to permanently strip Americans of their constitutionally protected rights," said FPC President Brandon Combs. "That's not faithful constitutional interpretation. It's an absurd excuse for government power. A criminal conviction isn't a blank check for lifetime disarmament, and a felony label doesn't establish that someone poses a physical danger. We just won a major victory against this immoral regime in the Third Circuit, and now we're taking the fight to the full Fifth Circuit. FPC has spent years building the historical record, advancing these arguments, and fighting these bans across the country. FPC and our Grassroots Army will continue to Fight Forward and end these unconstitutional and immoral laws so the government can no longer permanently disarm peaceable people merely because of a past conviction."
FPC's brief argues that the Nation's historical tradition supports only disarming people who have been judicially found to pose a danger of physical violence, not everyone swept into the federal government's ever-expanding category of prohibited persons. Courts must examine whether the underlying conviction actually establishes dangerousness sufficient to justify disarmament, rather than using broad classifications or speculative comparisons to historical punishments to impose lifetime bans.
The FPC brief also exposes the fundamental failure of the Diaz reasoning. The government's historical authority to execute someone for a crime centuries ago does not establish that it may permanently deprive a living person of the natural right of armed self-defense today. As FPC explains, if that logic were accepted, it could be used to justify stripping people of numerous other constitutional rights simply because a historical government once imposed a more severe punishment.
FPC's arguments draw on the Supreme Court's recent decisions in United States v. Rahimi, United States v. Hemani, and Wolford v. Lopez, which require courts to apply the actual principles reflected in America's historical tradition of firearm regulation—not invent analogies that expand government power beyond constitutional limits.
The brief follows another major FPC victory just last week. In Williams v. Blanche, the en banc Third Circuit affirmed a judgment holding that the federal government could not permanently disarm a peaceable man over a decades-old, nonviolent DUI conviction. The court concluded that historical restrictions applied to people who posed a physical danger, "not felons writ large." In a companion decision, United States v. Bost, the Third Circuit upheld disarmament based on a conviction involving threats of physical violence, illustrating the distinction between dangerous and peaceable people that FPC is urging the Fifth Circuit to recognize.
The Cordova brief is another important action in FPC's sustained nationwide campaign against unconstitutional federal disarmament laws. Earlier this month, FPC joined a Supreme Court brief in Johnson v. United States, challenging the permanent disarmament of a man convicted of a nonviolent marijuana offense. And last month, FPC filed an en banc brief in United States v. Squire, challenging Congress's asserted authority under the Commerce Clause to criminalize purely local firearm possession.
Through original historical research, scholarship, strategic litigation, and briefing in courts across the country, FPC continues to attack the federal government's unconstitutional disarmament regime on multiple fronts. In Cordova, FPC is asking the Fifth Circuit to reject the Diaz framework and establish a constitutional standard grounded in actual dangerousness rather than government-imposed labels and distorted history.
FPC is represented in this amicus filing by David H. Thompson, Peter A. Patterson, and William V. Bergstrom of Cooper & Kirk, PLLC.
FPC thanks its Grassroots Army members and supporters for making this important work possible. Individuals who want to join FPC and support its lawsuits, research, and other programs to restore liberty can join the FPC Grassroots Army at JoinFPC.org.
About Firearms Policy Coalition: Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) is a nonprofit membership organization that exists to create a world of maximal individual liberty and eliminate unconstitutional gun control laws. FPC works—and wins—for the People through high-impact strategic litigation, groundbreaking research, legislative and regulatory advocacy, grassroots activism, education, and public engagement. FPC's legal division, FPC Law, is the nation's leading initiative dedicated to restoring the right to keep and bear arms across the United States. To learn more about how FPC is working—and winning—for the People, sign up for FPC news alerts at firearmspolicy.org and follow FPC on X, Instagram, and Facebook.