United States v. Landrum: Bruen-era Second Amendment Uncertainty Does Not Make § 922(g)(1) Void for Vagueness

1. Introduction

In United States v. Landrum (5th Cir. Mar. 5, 2026), the Fifth Circuit considered a post-New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen challenge to the federal felon-in-possession statute, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). Defendant–Appellant Lester Landrum pleaded guilty to possessing a firearm after prior felony convictions, but preserved constitutional challenges for appeal.

Landrum advanced multiple constitutional attacks (Second Amendment facial and as-applied, Equal Protection, Commerce Clause), but conceded those arguments were foreclosed by existing Fifth Circuit precedent. His principal live claim was instead a Due Process vagueness challenge: he argued that Bruen and subsequent Fifth Circuit Second Amendment decisions made it unpredictable whether § 922(g)(1) could be constitutionally applied to a given felon, thereby depriving “ordinary people” of fair notice.

The Fifth Circuit rejected that framing and affirmed the conviction, articulating a clear separation between (i) whether a statute’s text provides notice of prohibited conduct and (ii) whether evolving constitutional doctrine affects litigation outcomes in individual cases.

2. Summary of the Opinion

The court held that § 922(g)(1) is not void for vagueness as applied to Landrum. Two core conclusions drove the result:

  1. Vagueness doctrine targets statutory indefiniteness, and § 922(g)(1) “clearly defines the prohibited conduct—possessing a firearm as a felon.” Because the statute itself is clear, the vagueness challenge fails.
  2. The “confusion” Landrum invoked cannot establish lack of notice in his case: United States v. Diaz post-dated his offense conduct, and Bruen did not address § 922(g)(1) or announce its invalidity. The court also noted the absence of precedent supporting the notion that a Supreme Court constitutional decision can render an otherwise clear criminal statute void for vagueness.

Accordingly, the Fifth Circuit AFFIRMED Landrum’s conviction.

3. Analysis

3.1. Precedents Cited

A. Precedent foreclosing Landrum’s other constitutional attacks

  • United States v. Diaz, 116 F.4th 458 (5th Cir. 2024): Cited for the proposition that § 922(g)(1) does not facially violate the Second Amendment in Fifth Circuit doctrine, while also describing Bruen as establishing a “new historical paradigm.” In Landrum, Diaz matters less for its operative Second Amendment holding than as the decision Landrum claimed created vagueness.
  • United States v. Kimble, 142 F.4th 308 (5th Cir. 2025), cert. denied, No. 25-5747, 2026 WL 135675 (U.S. Jan. 20, 2026): Holds § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as applied to persons with predicate drug trafficking felonies. Landrum had drug trafficking priors and conceded Kimble would allow his disarmament.
  • United States v. Giglio, 126 F.4th 1039 (5th Cir. 2025): Holds § 922(g)(1) is constitutional as applied to persons who possess a firearm while serving a term of supervised release. Landrum was on supervised release and conceded Giglio would allow disarmament.
  • United States v. Goody, 143 F.4th 617 (5th Cir. 2025) (per curiam): Forecloses Equal Protection challenges to § 922(g)(1) in this circuit.
  • United States v. Alcantar, 733 F.3d 143 (5th Cir. 2013): Forecloses the claim that § 922(g)(1) exceeds Congress’s Commerce Clause power.

B. Vagueness framework authorities

  • United States v. Williams, 553 U.S. 285 (2008): Supplies the foundational notice standard: due process is violated if the statute fails to provide fair notice of what is prohibited.
  • United States v. Mazurie, 419 U.S. 544 (1975): Provides the as-applied lens for vagueness challenges outside the First Amendment context—evaluated “in the light of the facts of the case at hand.”
  • United States v. Clark, 582 F.3d 607 (5th Cir. 2009): Emphasizes that the defendant must show the statute “is vague in his case,” reinforcing the as-applied focus used to dispatch Landrum’s claimed uncertainty.
  • Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352 (1983), and Johnson v. United States, 576 U.S. 591 (2015): Cited to underline that void-for-vagueness doctrine requires a penal statute to define the offense with sufficient definiteness—i.e., the target is the statutory definition itself.

C. Bruen-line Second Amendment cases and comparative circuit approaches

  • New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022): Establishes the “historical tradition” test for Second Amendment challenges, requiring the government to identify a “well-established and representative historical analogue.” Landrum invoked Bruen as the doctrinal event that supposedly destabilized notice.
  • United States v. Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120 (8th Cir. 2024), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 2708 (2025), and United States v. Hunt, 123 F.4th 697 (4th Cir. 2024), cert. denied, 145 S. Ct. 2756 (2025): Noted as examples of circuits treating § 922(g)(1) as categorically constitutional based on felon-disarmament tradition—contrasted with the Fifth Circuit’s more offense-specific approach in Diaz.
  • United States v. Betancourt, 139 F.4th 480 (5th Cir. 2025), cert. denied, No. 25-5514, 2026 WL 135617 (U.S. Jan. 20, 2026), and United States v. Cockerham, 162 F.4th 500 (5th Cir. 2025): Illustrate that post-Diaz the Fifth Circuit has sometimes upheld predicates (aggravated assault) and sometimes rejected them (failure to pay child support) under the historical-analogue method. Landrum used this variability to argue unpredictability.

D. The Fifth Circuit’s controlling response to the “Bruen-created vagueness” theory

  • United States v. Branson, 139 F.4th 475 (5th Cir. 2025), cert. denied, No. 25-5565, 2026 WL 135762 (U.S. Jan. 20, 2026): The pivotal analog for Landrum’s argument. Branson rejected a similar claim (on plain-error review), reasoning that § 922(g)(1)’s text is “pellucid” and that later interpretive developments do not retroactively make it vague. Landrum differed only in having preserved the argument, yielding de novo review, but the court applied the same substantive reasoning.
  • Columbia Nat. Res., Inc. v. Tatum, 58 F.3d 1101 (6th Cir. 1995): Cited for the proposition that no precedent supports attacking a Supreme Court decision as void for vagueness—used to rebut Landrum’s attempt to shift the vagueness target from the statute to Bruen itself.
  • United States v. Howard, 766 F.3d 414 (5th Cir. 2014): Supplies the standard of review for preserved challenges to the constitutionality of a criminal statute: de novo.

3.2. Legal Reasoning

The opinion’s reasoning proceeds in a tightly segmented way that effectively limits the reach of “doctrinal uncertainty” arguments:

A. The object of a vagueness challenge is the statute, not the case law

Landrum’s theory treated § 922(g)(1) as “vague” because post-Bruen litigation may require historically grounded, fact-specific judicial analysis (e.g., the Diaz predicate-offense analogue inquiry). The Fifth Circuit rejected this by returning to first principles: vagueness doctrine asks whether the penal statute defines the offense with sufficient definiteness. Under that lens, § 922(g)(1) is straightforward: it prohibits firearm possession by a person convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year.

This move is doctrinally important: it prevents vagueness doctrine from becoming a vehicle to challenge the complexity of constitutional adjudication rather than the clarity of the criminal prohibition.

B. Even an as-applied vagueness claim must show lack of notice “in his case”

Relying on United States v. Mazurie and United States v. Clark, the panel emphasized that—outside the First Amendment context—vagueness is assessed as applied to the defendant’s conduct. That framing made Landrum’s timeline problem dispositive:

  • Landrum’s offense conduct occurred in November 2023.
  • United States v. Diaz issued later (September 2024), so it could not have affected what Landrum or an “ordinary person” would understand in November 2023. The opinion treats this as a complete answer to the claim that Diaz created notice problems for Landrum.

C. Bruen did not create fair-notice confusion about § 922(g)(1)

Landrum’s reply brief shifted to claiming that New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen itself (2022) initiated the alleged vagueness by changing the Second Amendment test. The court responded with two points:

  • Bruen is not a § 922(g)(1) case and made no pronouncement about the statute’s validity; it therefore could not reasonably be said to have obscured whether § 922(g)(1) remained in force.
  • The court found no precedent allowing a vagueness challenge to succeed on the theory that constitutional interpretation has made a clear statute vague—quoting United States v. Branson and citing Columbia Nat. Res., Inc. v. Tatum.

D. Relationship to the Fifth Circuit’s Bruen-era § 922(g)(1) framework

The court took care to acknowledge the Fifth Circuit’s distinctive post-Bruen approach: unlike circuits such as the Fourth and Eighth (see United States v. Hunt and United States v. Jackson), the Fifth Circuit in United States v. Diaz does not accept felon status alone as a historically sufficient basis for disarmament. Instead, Fifth Circuit panels scrutinize whether the specific predicate offense has an historical analogue supporting disarmament.

But Landrum shows that, whatever the Second Amendment merits inquiry may require, it does not translate into Due Process notice defects where the criminal prohibition itself is clear.

3.3. Impact

United States v. Landrum is significant less for Second Amendment merits (those issues were largely foreclosed) than for its firm boundary-setting between: (i) substantive constitutional limits on enforcement of § 922(g)(1) under Bruen/Diaz, and (ii) procedural Due Process vagueness doctrine.

Likely consequences include:

  • Constraining “Bruen-created vagueness” litigation: Defendants in the Fifth Circuit will face an uphill battle arguing that the historical-analogue method itself deprives them of fair notice. Landrum endorses the proposition that clarity in the statutory text generally ends the vagueness inquiry.
  • Channeling challenges back into Second Amendment merits: To the extent defendants contend that their predicate offenses lack a historical analogue (as in cases like United States v. Cockerham), Landrum suggests the proper path is an as-applied Second Amendment challenge—not a vagueness theory.
  • Reinforcing temporal notice principles: By treating the post-offense issuance of United States v. Diaz as fatal to Landrum’s notice narrative, the decision underscores that fair-notice arguments are tethered to what existed at the time of the conduct.

4. Complex Concepts Simplified

  • Void for vagueness: A criminal law violates due process if it is so unclear that ordinary people cannot tell what conduct is forbidden, or if it invites arbitrary enforcement. Here, the court said § 922(g)(1) is clear: felons may not possess firearms.
  • As-applied vagueness (non-First Amendment): Under United States v. Mazurie and United States v. Clark, the question is not whether the statute is vague in the abstract, but whether it was vague as applied to the defendant’s conduct.
  • Bruen historical-tradition test: Under New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the government must justify modern gun regulations by showing they are consistent with historical firearm regulation traditions, typically by identifying historical “analogues.”
  • De novo review vs. plain-error review: Preserved constitutional claims are reviewed “from scratch” (de novo) (see United States v. Howard). Unpreserved claims are reviewed only for plain error (as in United States v. Branson), which is harder for defendants to win. Landrum received the more favorable de novo review but still lost because the statute was clear and his notice theory was legally misdirected.

5. Conclusion

United States v. Landrum establishes a practical and doctrinally clarifying rule for Bruen-era criminal litigation in the Fifth Circuit: a clear criminal statute is not rendered void for vagueness merely because evolving constitutional doctrine (and the case-by-case historical analysis it may entail) affects how courts assess the statute’s constitutionality in particular applications.

By anchoring fair notice to the statutory text and to what existed at the time of the defendant’s conduct—and by refusing to treat Bruen or later interpretive decisions as “vagueness catalysts”— the court preserved vagueness doctrine as a tool for policing unclear criminal prohibitions, not as an indirect means of challenging constitutional methodology or post hoc doctrinal evolution.