United States v. Hemani - Annotated Opinion

 Start with the government’s first point of comparison. In its view, the reason why vagrancy, civil-commitment, and surety laws targeted habitual drunkards is “closely analogous” to the reason why §922(g)(3)’s unlawful user provision targets unlawful users: Both groups regularly use intoxicants. Brief for United States 17. It’s a claim difficult to square with the historical record.

 Around the time of the founding and for decades following it, a habitual drunkard was, as one court put it, someone who “for any considerable part of his time [was] intoxicated to such a degree as to deprive him of his ordinary reasoning faculties.” In re Tracy, 1 Paige Ch. 580, 582–583 (N. Y. Ch. 1829). A regular or even frequent drinker did not usually fit the bill. A “man who [was] intoxicated or drunk one-half his time” was more like it. See Ludwick v. Commonwealth, 18 Pa. 172, 175 (1851). In an early American medical treatise, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, offered this description from a habitual drunkard about the depths of his condition: “ ‘Were a keg of rum in one corner of a room, and were a cannon constantly discharging balls between me and it, I could not refrain from passing before that cannon, in order to get at the rum.’ ” Medical Inquiries and Observations, Upon the Diseases of the Mind 266 (1812).

 Just consider how some of the statutes the government relies on defined the term. To qualify as a habitual drunkard under an early Arkansas law, someone had to drink to such excess that he was “incapable of conducting [his] own affairs.” Ark. Rev. Stat., ch. 78, §1 (1838) (W. Ball & S. Roane eds.) (Ball & Roane). A statute in the Minnesota Territory required an individual to be “mentally incompetent.” Minn. Terr. Rev. Stat., ch. 67, §12 (1851). A Connecticut law spoke of a person who had “lost the power of self-control.” Act of July 25, 1874, §1, in 1874 Conn. Pub. Acts 256. And in a statute governing the District of Columbia,  Congress defined a habitual drunkard as “any person who, by the use of intoxicating liquors . . . has lost self-control, or become incapable of proper attention to the care and management of his affairs, or habitually or periodically neglectful thereof, or dangerous to himself or others.” Act of Mar. 30, 1876, §9, 19 Stat. 10–11.

 Had habitual drunkard laws applied to those who simply drank regularly, many notable early Americans could have faced trouble. John Adams took “a tankard of hard cider” with his “daily breakfast.” W. Rorabaugh, The Alcoholic Republic 6 (1979) (Rorabaugh). Some say James Madison “consumed a pint of whiskey daily.” D. Okrent, Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition 8 (2010); but see M. Will-Weber, Mint Juleps with Teddy Roosevelt: The Complete History of Presidential Drinking 29 (2014) (arguing Madison “championed wine . . . as a healthier and more respectable choice”). George Washington often drank three glasses of madeira in the evening—“not enough to be considered a heavy drinker in his day.” Id., at 5. Thomas Jefferson enjoyed “3 or 4 glasses [of wine] at dinner.” J. Gabler, Passions: The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson 223 (1995). In fact, just a few days before the framers signed the Constitution, a farewell party gathered for General Washington at Philadelphia’s City Tavern where 55 guests are said to have ordered 54 bottles of madeira, 60 bottles of wine, 8 bottles of “Old stock,” 22 bottles of porter, 8 bottles of cider, 12 bottles of beer, and 7 large bowls of punch. National Park Service, C. Hershey, Historic Furnishings Plan: City Tavern 64–65 (1974).

 There was, in short, a “culture of copious drinking” in early America. D. Korostyshevsky, Incapable of Managing His Estate: Habitual Drunkards and the Expansion of Guardianship in the Nineteenth-Century United States, 43 Law & Hist. Rev. 795, 800 (2025). Indeed, in 1829 the “secretary of war estimated that three-quarters of the nation’s laborers drank . . . at least 4 ounces of distilled spirits”  every day. Rorabaugh 15. Even the American Temperance Society called those who drank 12 ounces of hard liquor daily mere “ ‘occasional drunkards.’ ” Id., at 11. As the Society saw things, it took 24 ounces to qualify as a “ ‘confirmed drunkar[d].’ ” Ibid.

 Given all this, it seems the government’s historical laws targeted habitual drunkards not merely because they regularly used intoxicants, or even sometimes used them to excess. Instead, those laws focused on habitual drunkards because their drinking rendered them practically incapacitated and incapable of managing their affairs. And that hardly compares to whom §922(g)(3)’s unlawful user provision targets on the government’s account. To be sure, the government construes the term “unlawful user” to embrace only “habitual or regular” users, not those who use drugs irregularly. Brief for United States 23–25. But even on that understanding, §922(g)(3) automatically disarms anyone who regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance for anything other than its “prescribed purpose.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 57. The law, the government insists, does not require it to show that a particular individual is regularly incapacitated, much less incapable of conducting his affairs or a threat to himself or others. Put simply, on the government’s telling, §922(g)(3) sweeps in large numbers of people without regard to whether their substance use has the kind of incapacitating effect on them that historical habitual drunkard laws normally required.

 This case illustrates the disconnect. The government considers Mr. Hemani an unlawful user of a controlled substance because he admits to using marijuana about every other day. But how much marijuana does Mr. Hemani use, in what potency, and to what effect? Is he routinely unable to manage his affairs, a risk to himself or his family? Or does he use a mild gummy as a sleep aid a few times a week? We do not know and, the government says, it doesn’t  matter. The government asks us to analogize him to a habitual drunkard all the same.

 Nor does the government’s theory stop at Mr. Hemani. It extends equally to a husband who regularly takes his wife’s prescription Ambien to sleep and a college student who routinely uses a friend’s Adderall to cram for exams. Id., at 56–58. The drug involved makes no difference. Nor, again, does it matter how much an individual uses or the effects it has on him. That someone regularly uses any substance found on any of the CSA’s five schedules for anything other than its “prescribed purpose” is enough. Id., at 57. Without more, the government asks us to analogize all such persons to habitual drunkards. To state the analogy is to expose its deficiency.

 This divergence is not the government’s only problem. The government faces more trouble yet when it comes to its next argument. It contends that §922(g)(3) disarms unlawful drug users to protect the public from “unusually dangerous” individuals who will “misuse . . . firearms” to commit “violent crime[s].” Brief for United States 11, 13–14, 22, 34. And, the government submits, early American vagrancy, civil-commitment, and surety laws shared a similar purpose. But even spotting the government its assertion about §922(g)(3)’s aims (something we will return to later), the government misapprehends the purposes animating the historical analogues it invokes. Usually, they had little to do with protecting the public from categorically violent and unusually dangerous persons.

 Begin with the vagrancy laws. As a rule, they targeted individuals who “did not meet the societal expectation of work.” W. Quigley, Reluctant Charity: Poor Laws in the Original Thirteen States, 31 U. Rich. L. Rev. 111, 169 (1997) (Quigley). Routinely, that category included not just habitual drunkards but also “Vagabonds, Common  Beggars,” “pipers, fidlers, . . . stubborn servants or children, [and] common nightwalkers.” Act of Oct. 1727, 7 Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut from May, 1726, to May, 1735, Inclusive 127–128 (C. Hoadly ed. 1873) (Hoadly).⁴ Add to that list perhaps any others who would not “provide for themselves or the support of their families.” Id., at 128. Some laws confined vagrants to workhouses where they could be “se[t] to work.” Ibid.; see also Quigley 156–157, 168–169. Other statutes authorized short jail terms. See, e.g., Hittell 1288. Either way, laws like these might have sought to promote productivity and suppress any number of real or perceived vices. But they scarcely focused on protecting the public from a “categor[y]” of “unusually dangerous” persons. Brief for United States 10–11.

 A similar story unfolds when it comes to what the government describes as civil-commitment laws. Consider the first such law the government cites: an 1827 Act in the Michigan Territory. Act of Apr. 12, 1827, in 1827 Mich. Terr. Laws 60. Worried that habitual drunkards “oftentimes . . . waste[d] their estates by excessive drinking . . . and thereby involve[d] themselves and [their] families in distress, misery, and ruin,” that law permitted a probate judge to assign a guardian to a habitual drunkard to “take care of such person, and [his] estate.” Id., at 58, 60. Or consider a law the government cites from later in the 19th century. It authorized courts to confine habitual drunkards  to asylums in order to “preven[t them] from using intoxicating liquors” and “refor[m]” them. Act of May 1, 1890, §2, in 1890 Iowa Acts 67. By their own terms, laws like these did not seek to protect the public from violence so much as to protect habitual drunkards from themselves and their families from financial devastation.⁵

 Last, turn to the surety laws. In Rahimi, we rejected a facial challenge to §922(g)(8), a provision that prohibits firearm possession by certain individuals subject to domestic violence restraining orders. In reaching that decision, we analogized the modern statute in part to historical surety-of-the-peace laws. 602 U. S., at 695–696. Those laws generally required an individual shown to pose a specific threat of violence to post a bond and pledge to “keep the peace.” Id., at 695–697 (internal quotation marks omitted); see also J. Parker, Conductor Generalis 397 (1788) (Parker) (sureties of the peace applied to those who posed “some present or future danger”). Failure to post a bond meant jail, and disturbing the peace after posting a bond meant forfeiting it. Rahimi, 602 U. S., at 695. Some surety-of-the-peace laws, we held, were designed to prevent “violence” and  “targeted the misuse of firearms,” much as §922(g)(8) seeks to do. Id., at 695–696.

 Notably, the government doesn’t rely on surety-of-the-peace statutes in this case. And that makes sense. To warrant the imposition of a surety of the peace, just being a habitual drunkard wasn’t usually enough. So in this case the government directs us to a different kind of surety statute—one that required certain individuals to post sureties of “good behavior.” Brief for United States 22 (internal quotation marks omitted). Under those laws, a judicial officer could impose a surety of good behavior on individuals who threatened a “scandal.” Parker 410. And a scandal could include anything from “haunting bawdy houses” to “eves-dropp[ing]” to, yes, being a “common drunkar[d].” Ibid. In fact, one surety statute targeted those who had “a common practice of getting drunk, and prophane cursing and swearing, and blasphemy, to the great dishonour of Almighty God.” 1 Del. Laws 173 (1797). But what does any of this prove? To impose a surety of good behavior did not normally require a showing that an individual posed a threat of violence. Instead, these laws usually sought to protect the community from scandals “against good morals.” 5 N. Dane, A General Abridgment and Digest of American Law 301 (1824) (emphasis deleted); see also Parker 410. And that is nothing like the purpose the government ascribes to §922(g)(3)’s unlawful user provision.

 The government’s difficulties do not end with the “why” comparisons it invites us to make. They also extend to the “how.” “Even when a law regulates arms-bearing for a permissible reason,” we have said, “it may not be compatible with the [Second Amendment] if it does so to an extent beyond what was done at the founding.” Rahimi, 602 U. S., at 692. And the way habitual drunkard statutes worked in  the past differs significantly from how §922(g)(3)’s unlawful user provision works today.

 The historical laws the government identifies usually provided some form of process before an individual lost any of his liberties, even temporarily. Normally, a vagrant could be sent to a workhouse or jail only upon a “conviction.” E.g., Hoadly 128–129. Generally, a habitual drunkard could be assigned a guardian or committed to an asylum only after proceedings before a probate court or something like it. See, e.g., Ball & Roane 456. And, typically, surety statutes required a proceeding before a justice of the peace or a comparable officer before a bond could be ordered (or, if a bond wasn’t posted, before a jail sentence could be imposed). E.g., Acts and Laws of the State of Conn. 189 (E. Babcock ed. 1786); see also Rahimi, 602 U. S., at 699.

 None of that holds true for §922(g)(3). On the government’s account, the statute automatically divests an individual of his constitutional right to bear arms the moment he becomes an unlawful user and until he ends his drug use—all without any pre-deprivation process. To be sure, and as the government highlights, an unlawful user who violates this ban is entitled to “a full-dress criminal trial” before he can be imprisoned or permanently disarmed. Brief for United States 26. But be that as it may, §922(g)(3) offers an unlawful user no pre-deprivation process before his “ ‘temporary disarmament,’ ” the very burden the government says is akin to the burden vagrancy, civil-commitment, and surety laws imposed on habitual drunkards. Ibid.⁶

 We see one more problem yet with the government’s submission. Recall its claim about §922(g)(3)’s “why.” The government argues that, consistent with historical laws, §922(g)(3)’s unlawful user provision disarms individuals who are, as a “category,” “violen[t]” and “unusually dangerous.” Brief for United States 4, 10–11. So far, we have spotted the government its assertion about §922(g)(3)’s purpose. But there are at least two reasons to doubt it has established even that much.

 The first has to do with §922(g)(3)’s reliance on the CSA. The former does not define its own category of people to disarm. Instead, according to the government, it disarms anyone who regularly uses any drug found on any CSA schedule for something other than its “prescribed purpose.” Tr. of Oral Arg. 57. The CSA, in turn, was adopted to protect “the health and general welfare of the American people.” 21 U. S. C. §801(2). Drugs can be added to its schedules for a variety of reasons having little or nothing to do with their potential to induce violence—reasons that include “[t]he state of current scientific knowledge” about a substance, whether that substance “is an immediate precursor” to another controlled substance, and the risk to “public health.” §811(c). Without question, some unlawful users of controlled substances can pose a risk of violence. But, by defining its scope through the CSA—a statute animated by a variety of other concerns—it is far from obvious that 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(3) confines its reach to those who are categorically and unusually dangerous.

  The second reason has to do with the government’s approach to the drug at issue here. As this case came to us, marijuana was listed on Schedule I—a schedule reserved for drugs with “a high potential for abuse” with “no currently accepted medical use.” 21 U. S. C. §812(b)(1). But after we heard oral argument, the government moved some marijuana products to Schedule III, 91 Fed. Reg. 22714 (2026), a schedule that applies to drugs with a lower potential for dependence and abuse and for which a “currently accepted medical use” exists, §812(b)(3). Years before that, too, the Department of Justice issued a memorandum directing federal prosecutors nationwide to curtail their enforcement efforts against marijuana users even while all marijuana products remained on Schedule I. Attorney General Memo (Aug. 29, 2013).

 Seismic changes followed that memorandum. While marijuana use largely remained unlawful under federal law, the number of federal offenders sentenced for possession of marijuana dwindled. See United States Sentencing Commission, Interactive Data Analyzer. And most States responded by legalizing marijuana use to one degree or another as a matter of state law. See Nat. Conf. of State Legislatures, State Medical Cannabis Laws (June 27, 2025) (“Forty states, three territories and the District of Columbia” have legalized some marijuana use). As a result, some surveys suggest there now may be more adults in this country who regularly use marijuana than consume alcohol. See, e.g., J. Caulkins, Changes in Self-Reported Cannabis Use in the United States from 1979 to 2022, 119 Addiction 1648 (2024) (finding, for the first time in 2022, more individuals who self-report daily or near-daily marijuana use than alcohol use). Whatever one thinks of these developments, the federal government has not just tolerated them; it helped fuel them. All of which leaves it awkwardly positioned to suggest that the millions of Americans who now  regularly use marijuana are categorically and unusually dangerous.

 In saying this much, we do not question that sometimes an individual’s unlawful use of marijuana (or any other controlled substance) may render him a danger to others. But, again, the government disclaims the need to show anything like that in this case. Instead, it asks us to conclude that anyone who regularly uses marijuana is categorically violent and dangerous without any further showing. All based on little more than its current say-so, one at odds with its own regulatory actions. And affording the government that kind of “broad power to designate any group as dangerous and thereby disqualify its members from having a gun” would risk allowing it to “quickly swallow” the Second Amendment. Kanter v. Barr, 919 F. 3d 437, 465 (CA7 2019) (Barrett, J., dissenting).

 In many respects, this case is a narrow one. We do not address efforts to ban addicts, see n. 2, supra, or those presently intoxicated, from possessing a firearm. We do not address other prophylactic laws Congress might adopt after determining that users of a particular drug pose a special risk of misusing firearms. See n. 6, supra. We do not address 18 U. S. C. §922(g)(1)’s provision disarming individuals convicted of felonies (often including drug-related ones). Ibid. We do not even address whether the government could bring a prosecution under §922(g)(3) accompanied by individualized proof that the defendant’s use of marijuana (or any other drug) renders him a danger to himself or others. Or proof that a certain drug always renders its users dangerous because of its potency or for some other reason. None of those issues is before us and we do not pass on them either way.

 All that is before us is one, if surely ambitious, theory. The government maintains that it may automatically strip  Mr. Hemani of his Second Amendment right to possess a firearm because he uses marijuana a few times a week. More than that, because he possessed a gun despite this prohibition, the government insists it may imprison him for up to 15 years and disarm him for life. According to the government, none of this turns on how much marijuana Mr. Hemani uses or what effect it has on him. It makes no difference either if he keeps a firearm only in his home for self-defense, never misuses a gun while intoxicated, and never poses a danger to himself or others as a result of his marijuana use. The only thing the government must show, it says, is that an individual like Mr. Hemani regularly uses any amount of any controlled substance.

 To square that expansive theory with the Second Amendment, the government invites us to draw an analogy between its present regulation and historical laws addressing habitual drunkards. Those laws, the government contends, demonstrate a tradition of firearm regulation consistent with its effort to disarm any regular user of any controlled substance without any further showing. But the government’s analogy fails under every measure it asks us to consider: The historical laws on which it relies targeted different kinds of people, did so for different reasons, and operated in different ways. And faced with all these shortcomings in the government’s submission, we cannot say it has carried its conceded burden of showing its prosecution of Mr. Hemani complies with the Second Amendment.

 The judgment of the Fifth Circuit is affirmed.

 As an original matter, the Commerce Clause authorizes Congress only “to regulate the buying and selling of goods and services trafficked across state lines.” Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U. S. 1, 58 (2005) (Thomas, J., dissenting). It gives Congress no power to regulate “activities wholly separated from business, such as gun possession.” Lopez, 514 U. S., at 599 (Thomas, J., concurring). “[T]he power to regulate ‘commerce’ can by no means encompass authority over mere gun possession, any more than it empowers the Federal Government to regulate marriage, littering, or cruelty to animals, throughout the 50 States.” Id., at 585.

 Because §922(g) criminalizes possession of firearms apart from any purchase or sale of goods and services across state lines, I doubt that it could be an exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers as an original matter.

 Section 922(g), it seems, also “cannot be reconciled” with this Court’s modern Commerce Clause doctrine. Alderman, 562 U. S., at 1166 (opinion of Thomas, J.). Under that doctrine, §922(g) must fall within one of three categories to be constitutional: It must either regulate “the use of the channels of interstate commerce,” “regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce,” or regulate “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” Lopez, 514 U. S., at 558–559.

 Section 922(g) does not seem to fall within either of the first two categories. It does not, as far as I can tell, regulate the “use of the channels of interstate commerce” because it criminalizes possession of a firearm within a State long after any use of those channels. Nor does it “regulate and protect the instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or persons or things in interstate commerce” because it requires no showing that the possession in question poses any  risk to interstate buying, selling, shipping, or transportation.

 I also doubt that §922(g) can fall within the third and broadest category for regulations of “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” Id., at 559. The mere possession of a firearm that long ago crossed state lines is not “economic activity” in any sense, and the Court has never upheld regulation of intrastate activity that is not “economic in nature” under this category. United States v. Morrison, 529 U. S. 598, 613 (2000). Moreover, our precedents suggest that merely possessing a gun does not have a “substantial effect” on interstate commerce. Section 922(g) targets classes of people that the Government thinks “threaten the safety of the community” if they have weapons. Brief for United States 10. But, the Court has emphatically rejected “the argument that Congress may regulate noneconomic, violent criminal conduct based solely on that conduct’s aggregate effect on interstate commerce.” Morrison, 529 U. S., at 617. Accordingly, in Lopez, the Court concluded that “possession of a gun in a local school zone is in no sense an economic activity that might, through repetition elsewhere, substantially affect any sort of interstate commerce.” 514 U. S., at 567. Like the gun-possession statute at issue in Lopez, §922(g) is not a regulation of economic activity, but a law to combat “crime and violence,” even at the local level. Gun Control Act of 1968, Pub. L. 90–618, §101, 82 Stat. 1213.²*

  For these reasons, lower court judges have for decades concluded that under this Court’s precedents, §922(g) exceeds Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. See, e.g., United States v. Chesney, 86 F. 3d 564, 574–575 (CA6 1996) (Batchelder, J., concurring); United States v. Kuban, 94 F. 3d 971, 977 (CA5 1996) (DeMoss, J., dissenting); United States v. Storey, 571 F. Supp. 3d 1296, 1298 (MD Fla. 2021) (Mizelle, J.); United States v. Seekins, 52 F. 4th 988, 991 (CA5 2022) (Ho, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc); United States v. Bonner, 159 F. 4th 338, 343 (CA5 2025) (Willett, J., concurring); see also United States v. Patton, 451 F. 3d 615, 634 (CA10 2006) (McConnell, J.) (regarding an analogous restriction on possessing body armor); United States v. Alderman, 565 F. 3d 641, 648 (CA9 2009) (Paez, J., dissenting) (same); United States v. Alderman, 593 F. 3d 1141 (CA9 2010) (O’Scannlain, J., dissenting from denial of rehearing en banc) (same).

 In upholding §922(g) under the Commerce Clause, the courts of appeals have misapprehended our precedents in two ways. Some have thought that Scarborough’s statutory holding required them to uphold §922(g)’s constitutionality. Others have concluded that the presence of a so-called “jurisdictional hook” in §922(g) renders the statute constitutional under Lopez and Morrison. Neither rationale establishes that §922(g) is constitutional.

 Several courts have upheld §922(g) based on this Court’s decision in Scarborough alone. They have understood Scarborough’s interpretation of the statutory “in” or “affecting commerce” requirement to establish, as a matter of Supreme Court precedent, that §922(g) is a valid exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers in all its applications. Some have even suggested that they would otherwise find §922(g) unconstitutional. See, e.g., Rawls, 85 F. 3d, at 243 (Garwood, J., concurring) (writing for the full panel and explaining that Scarborough “bind[s]” the court to uphold §922(g)’s constitutionality even though “one might well wonder how it could rationally be concluded that mere possession of a firearm in any meaningful way concerns interstate commerce”); United States v. Gateward, 84 F. 3d 670, 671 (CA3 1996) (upholding the statute on the ground that Lopez did not abrogate Scarborough); Patton, 451 F. 3d, at 636 (“[W]e see considerable tension between Scarborough” and later decisions, but “we are bound by Scarborough”).

 Those courts misread Scarborough. The Court has never held that §922(g) is constitutional whenever the Scarborough test is satisfied. See Alderman, 562 U. S., at 1168 (opinion of Thomas, J.). Scarborough’s holding “was statutory, not constitutional.” Seekins, 52 F. 4th, at 991 (opinion of Ho, J.); accord, Bonner, 159 F. 4th, at 342 (Willett, J., concurring); Brief for Firearms Policy Coalition as Amicus Curiae 13–14. Scarborough addressed only whether “Congress intended no more than a minimal nexus requirement” in its statutory requirement that the firearm in question was received, possessed, or transported “in commerce or affecting commerce.” 431 U. S., at 564, 577 (internal quotation marks omitted). It based its holding on the statute’s “language” and “legislative history,” not constitutional law. Id., at 575. Scarborough cannot be taken, by this Court or the courts of appeals, as purporting to settle the question of §922(g)’s constitutionality. See United States v. L. A. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U. S. 33, 38 (1952) (explaining that holdings of this Court cannot be gleaned from issues not “discussed in the opinion of the Court”).

  Other courts have upheld §922(g)’s constitutionality solely on the ground that it has a “jurisdictional hook” purporting to connect the offense to interstate commerce. E.g., United States v. McAllister, 77 F. 3d 387, 389–390 (CA11 1996); United States v. Dorris, 236 F. 3d 582, 585–586 (CA10 2000); United States v. Lemons, 302 F. 3d 769, 772 (CA7 2002); United States v. Smith, 101 F. 3d 202, 215 (CA1 1996); United States v. Hanna, 55 F. 3d 1456, 1462, n. 2 (CA9 1995); United States v. Singletary, 268 F. 3d 196, 204 (CA3 2001). Under Scarborough, §922(g) requires that the firearm at some point traveled across state lines. This jurisdictional element, these courts say, itself shows a sufficient “nexus with interstate commerce.” United States v. Bell, 70 F. 3d 495, 498 (CA7 1995); accord, e.g., Rawls, 85 F. 3d, at 242–243; United States v. Bolton, 68 F. 3d 396, 400 (CA10 1995). And, on this view, the “jurisdictional element” in §922(g) “distinguishes it from the statutes considered in Lopez and Morrison,” which lacked such a hook. Singletary, 268 F. 3d, at 204.

 This justification, too, appears to conflict with our precedents. Congress cannot regulate the possession of every thing that ever traveled across state lines. Alderman, 562 U. S., at 1167 (opinion of Thomas, J.). As a statutory matter, Congress required no more. But, treating Congress’s “jurisdictional element” as dispositive “could very well remove any limit on the commerce power” and “would trespass on traditional state police powers.” Ibid. It would also render meaningless this Court’s decisions requiring that exercises of the commerce power fit within defined categories. Morrison, 529 U. S., at 608–609.

 Nothing in Lopez or Morrison suggests anything to the contrary. Lopez considered a jurisdictional hook helpful only if it “would ensure, through case-by-case inquiry, that the firearm possession in question affects interstate commerce.” 514 U. S., at 561. But, as explained, §922(g)’s bare requirement that the firearm previously traveled across  state lines does not ensure that the firearm possession in question affects interstate commerce: Mere possession of a firearm does not necessarily affect commerce at all. Morrison also said that a jurisdictional hook could help show that the statute “is in pursuance of Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce.” 529 U. S., at 613. But, the fact that §922(g) purports to be an exercise of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers does not mean that it falls within the legitimate scope of those powers.