United States of America v. Aldo Ali Cordova Perez, Jr.

United States Court of Appeals
For the Eighth Circuit
___________________________
No. 24-1553
___________________________
United States of America
Plaintiff - Appellee
v.
Aldo Ali Cordova Perez, Jr.
Defendant - Appellant
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Appeal from United States District Court
for the Southern District of Iowa - Central
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Submitted: January 16, 2025
Filed: July 22, 2025
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Before LOKEN, SHEPHERD, and KELLY, Circuit Judges.
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KELLY, Circuit Judge.
A jury convicted Aldo Ali Cordova Perez, Jr., of possessing a firearm as an
unlawful drug user, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3). Cordova Perez appeals,
arguing that his conviction violates the Second Amendment. In light of our decision
in United States v. Cooper, 127 F.4th 1092 (8th Cir. 2025), we vacate and remand
for further proceedings.

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I.
On April 11, 2023, federal agents set up a “buy-bust” operation in Des
Moines, Iowa, through a confidential informant. The agents arranged to buy over 15
pounds of methamphetamine from someone in a gold Dodge Durango in the parking
lot of a bowling alley. That afternoon, officers surveilled the bowling alley in
unmarked police vehicles, and as expected, a gold Dodge Durango soon pulled into
the parking lot. Cordova Perez was driving the Durango.
Officers entered the lot and tried to trap the Durango with their vehicles, but
Cordova Perez navigated around them and sped away. A chase ensued at “crazy fast”
speeds, snaking through residential areas “all over the south side of Des Moines.”
During the chase, the Durango sideswiped one officer’s unmarked vehicle and,
eventually, Cordova Perez crashed the Durango into a concrete post beside the road.
He exited the vehicle and tried to flee on foot, at which point officers tackled him to
the ground and arrested him. In a subsequent search of the Durango, officers found
a large quantity of methamphetamine in a box on the front-passenger-seat
floorboard.
Cordova Perez and the officers “jok[ed] with each other” during his arrest.
Cordova Perez told them to be easy on him and asked them where they worked out.
He added that “he would have plenty of time to be working out” and asked which
officer was driving a white car that he “couldn’t shake” during the chase. Officers
“found a small bag of marijuana” in Cordova Perez’s pocket, and he admitted that
he had smoked marijuana earlier that day. Later, he told a DEA agent that he used
marijuana two or three times daily.
Cordova Perez was not carrying a firearm at the time of his arrest, and there
was no firearm in the Durango. However, Cordova Perez told officers that he owned
a “legally purchased” weapon—a .22-caliber rifle—that he kept in a closet at home.
He had bought the rifle “[j]ust for home safety” years before and had used it only

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once. Officers later found the rifle sitting atop a shelf in Cordova Perez’s bedroom
closet, speckled with dust.
At trial, Cordova Perez denied knowingly trafficking drugs. He testified that
he had agreed to deliver a box to the bowling alley as a favor for a friend, but did
not know the box’s contents. According to Cordova Perez, “out of nowhere a bunch
of vehicles just c[a]me in and surround[ed] me.” Cordova Perez did not know the
vehicles’ drivers were officers, and he testified that he “got scared . . . put the car in
drive, and . . . fled.” When asked why he did not stop his vehicle upon hearing
officers’ sirens, Cordova Perez testified, “I was scared. I was pretty high, and I had
some marijuana in my pocket, so I kind of—it was a too-late situation, and I just
kind of kept going.” He elaborated that he “wasn’t really thinking at all,” “just ha[d]
to get away,” was “[s]cared because [he] was high, and . . . just didn’t know what to
do at the time.”
Cordova Perez was tried on two counts of possession with intent to distribute
a controlled substance under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and (b)(1)(A); one count of
possessing a firearm in furtherance of drug trafficking under 18 U.S.C.
§ 924(c)(1)(A)(i); and one count of possessing a firearm as an unlawful drug user
under 18 U.S.C. §§ 922(g)(3) and 924(a)(8). The jury ultimately acquitted Cordova
Perez on all but the § 922(g)(3) count.
After his trial, Cordova Perez moved for judgment of acquittal, arguing that
§ 922(g)(3) was unconstitutional both facially and as applied to his case. The district
court found that the statute survived facial challenge; the court then found that any
as-applied challenge would fail “given the undisputed evidence that Cordova Perez:
(i) unlawfully used marijuana at least two to three times per day while in constructive
and/or actual possession of a firearm; and (ii) engaged in unpredictable and highly
dangerous behavior while under the influence of the drug.”
At sentencing, the district court stressed the dangerousness and recklessness
of Cordova Perez’s car chase. The court stated that “[w]hat Mr. Cordova Perez did

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starting in that parking lot and then afterwards, fleeing at speeds above 60 miles an
hour, crashing into a car . . . . was as reckless as I can imagine.” To the court, Cordova
Perez’s conduct was “incredibly reckless and dangerous,” and “[i]n some ways of
all the conduct . . . in this case . . . the most inexcusable.” For his part, Cordova Perez
“apologize[d] to the state of Iowa, the officers that [he] put in danger during the
course of [his] arrest, and [his] family.” The court sentenced him to 36 months’
imprisonment.
Cordova Perez appeals the denial of his motion for acquittal, and our review
is de novo. United States v. Earth, 984 F.3d 1289, 1300 (8th Cir. 2021).
II.
Section 922(g)(3) prohibits firearm possession by anyone “who is an unlawful
user of or addicted to any controlled substance.” 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3). We have
held that a defendant falls within the statute’s ambit if he “was actively engaged in
the use of a controlled substance during the time he possessed firearms.” United
States v. Carnes, 22 F.4th 743, 749 (8th Cir. 2022).
Cordova Perez does not appear to dispute that he was an active marijuana user
during the time he possessed his rifle. Instead, he argues that applying § 922(g)(3)
to his conduct—driving while high on marijuana, with a gun sitting unused back at
home—is inconsistent with Founding-era firearm regulations and thus violates the
Second Amendment, both facially and as applied to him. See generally N.Y. State
Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022). Our precedent forecloses Cordova
Perez’s facial challenge, see United States v. Veasley, 98 F.4th 906, 918 (8th Cir.
2024);1 United States v. Seay, 620 F.3d 919, 923–25 (8th Cir. 2010), but we recently
held that Second Amendment “as-applied challenges to the drug-user-in-possession
1 Cordova Perez argues we should reconsider our holding in Veasley in light
of the Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680 (2024).
But since Rahimi, we have rejected an identical facial challenge. See Cooper, 127
F.4th at 1094 n.1.

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statute are available,” Cooper, 127 F.4th at 1094. We thus turn to Cordova Perez’s
as-applied challenge.
“An as-applied challenge asks the reviewing court to declare the disputed
statute unconstitutional ‘on the facts of the particular case.’” United States v.
Lehman, 8 F.4th 754, 757 (8th Cir. 2021) (quoting United States v. Adams, 914 F.3d
602, 605 (8th Cir. 2019)). Accordingly, looking to the facts of Cordova Perez’s case,
we must determine whether his conviction under § 922(g)(3) deprived him of his
Second Amendment right. See id. To do so, we employ a test grounded in “text and
historical understanding.” Veasley, 98 F.4th at 909 (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 26).
We first ask whether “the Second Amendment’s plain text covers [Cordova Perez’s]
conduct.” Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24. If so, “[t]he government must then justify its
regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition
of firearm regulation.” Id. The parties agree that the Second Amendment’s plain text
covers Cordova Perez’s conduct, so we address only the latter inquiry: that is,
whether Cordova Perez’s conviction is analogically consistent with firearms
regulation at the Founding.
The government ventures three Founding-era practices—regulations of
intoxicating substances, the confinement of “those who were both mentally ill and
dangerous,” and so-called “going armed” or surety laws—and argues that they map
onto Cordova Perez’s conduct sufficiently to render § 922(g)(3) constitutional as
applied to him. In turn, Cordova Perez argues that no Founding-era analogue
supports his conviction because he merely used marijuana and he kept his rifle
“stored away” in his home, so he “cannot be said to have been going armed to
threaten others, or even to have presented any threat to the community with the
firearm.”
In Veasley, we surveyed the same three Founding-era regulatory traditions in
the context of a facial challenge to § 922(g)(3). 98 F.4th at 910–17. We first rejected
any comparison between § 922(g)(3) and Founding-era intoxication regulations. Id.
at 910–12. Those laws—including a Virginia law banning “shoot[ing] any gunns at

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drinkeing” and a New York law prohibiting firing guns in the days surrounding New
Years due to “the ‘great Damages’ done by those ‘intoxicated with Liquor’”—were
insufficiently analogous to § 922(g)(3) because they concerned firearm use, not
possession, and “were temporary and narrow in scope.” Id. at 911 (alteration in
original) (citations omitted).2 However, we concluded that the user-in-possession
statute found some support in the two other historical analogues the government
invokes here (and invoked in Veasley): regulations of the mentally ill and going-
armed laws. See id. at 912–17. We recounted that at the Founding, those whose
mental illness caused them to act in erratic or dangerous ways could be confined and
temporarily deprived of their civil liberties, including any right to possess a firearm,
until they regained their faculties. Id. at 915 (“Society’s answer to mental illness, in
other words, was to lock up anyone who was ‘dangerous or disturbing to others.’”
(quoting Alan Dershowitz, The Origins of Preventive Confinement in Anglo-
American Law Part II: The American Experience, 43 U. Cin. L. Rev. 781, 788
(1974))). Additionally, “Founding-era criminal prohibition[s] on taking up arms to
terrify the people” barred those who were inclined to terrorize others from arming
themselves. Id. at 916–17 (citations omitted). Because drug use “can induce
terrifying conduct”—including, but not limited to, similar “behavioral effects” to
2 Veasley also pointed out that because opiate use was “widespread” at the
Founding, the fact that no firearm regulations concerning drug users existed at the
time suggested “that disarmament is a modern solution to a centuries-old problem.”
98 F.4th at 912. The government disputes Veasley’s characterization of the history,
arguing that drug use was not actually widespread in the United States at the
Founding, and thus the regulatory silence is less telling. See id. at 911 (“When a
‘challenged regulation [like § 922(g)(3)] addresses a general societal problem that
has persisted since the 18th century,’ like substance abuse, ‘the lack of a distinctly
similar historical regulation addressing that problem is relevant evidence that the
challenged regulation is inconsistent with the Second Amendment.’” (alteration in
original) (quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 26)). But even if the government is correct,
substance abuse involving alcohol—whose effects are analogous to controlled
substances—was widespread at the Founding, and the government has failed to point
to Founding-era regulations of alcohol use that involved disarmament in a way
analogous to § 922(g)(3). Id.

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mental illness—we concluded both Founding-era practices were analogous enough
to § 922(g)(3)’s user-in-possession ban for the statute to at least sometimes pass
constitutional muster. Id. at 912, 915–17.
In turn, our court held in Cooper that § 922(g)(3) is consistent with the Second
Amendment as applied to at least two situations: when use of a controlled substance
1) “ma[d]e [the defendant] act like someone who is both mentally ill and dangerous”;
or 2) would cause the defendant to “induce terror, or pose a credible threat to the
physical safety of others with a firearm.” 127 F.4th at 1096 (citations and internal
quotations omitted); see also United States v. Rahimi, 602 U.S. 680, 693 (2024)
(“[T]he Government offers ample evidence that the Second Amendment permits the
disarmament of individuals who pose a credible threat to the physical safety of
others.”).3 Neither analogue4 requires that the defendant contemporaneously carried
a firearm. But see United States v. Connelly, 117 F.4th 269, 281 (5th Cir. 2024)
(reading the history to “provide support for banning the carry of firearms while
actively intoxicated”). Instead, the focus is on whether drugs made the defendant act
dangerously, see Veasley, 98 F.4th at 916 (concluding § 922(g)(3) fit into a tradition
of disarming “drug users and addicts who pose a danger to others”), or whether the
3 These two situations track Justice Kennedy’s insight into how drug use can
relate to dangerous behavior. See Harmelin v. Michigan, 501 U.S. 957, 1002 (1991)
(Kennedy, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment) (noting “drug-induced
changes in physiological functions” and the risk that those who use drugs “commit
crime in order to obtain money to buy [them]”).
4 Cooper also left open the possibility that the government could “identif[y] a
new analogue we missed.” 127 F.4th at 1096. But the government has not done so
here. See Bruen, 597 U.S. at 24 (noting that the government bears the burden of
finding analogues). For this reason, we have no occasion to address whether
Founding-era confinement of “habitual drunkards,” an analogue that has been raised
in another recent case, see Petition for Certiorari at 10, United States v. Hemani, No.
24-1234, 2025 WL 1593262, at *10 (June 2, 2025), is consistent with disarming all
those who “actively engage[] in the use of a controlled substance” while possessing
firearms. Carnes, 22 F.4th at 749.

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defendant’s drug use could reasonably be seen to threaten others’ physical safety,
see Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 693.5
Nor does every application of § 922(g)(3) require an individualized factual
determination of the type Cooper explicitly addressed. Before Cooper, we observed
that “[t]h[e] historical record suggests that legislatures traditionally possessed
discretion to disqualify categories of people from possessing firearms to address a
danger of misuse by those who deviated from legal norms,” or “presented an
unacceptable risk of danger if armed.” United States v. Jackson, 110 F.4th 1120,
1127–28 (8th Cir. 2024). For such “a class of prohibited persons,” “there is no
requirement for an individualized determination of dangerousness as to each person
in [the] class.” Id. at 1128. Analogizing here, certain categories of active drug
users—classified either by drug type or the frequency or manner of a defendant’s
use—may be disarmed consistent with the Second Amendment if the government
shows that any member of that “class” either “demonstrate[s] disrespect for legal
5 Individualized applications of Cooper’s test are fact-intensive, without room
for unevidenced presumptions about who might be dangerous, or how that danger
may manifest or be perceived. For example, while we have noted that “the 80-year-
old grandmother who uses marijuana . . . and keeps a pistol tucked away” is not an
obvious danger or threat to others, Veasley, 98 F.4th at 917–18, in certain
circumstances she well could pose one. See Christopher P. Salas-Wright et al.,
Trends and Correlates of Marijuana Use Among Late Middle-Aged and Older
Adults in the United States, 2002–2014, 171 Drug & Alcohol Dependence 97, 105
(2017) (noting that “older adult marijuana users are substantially more likely than
their abstinent counterparts to . . . experience an array of behavioral health
conditions”); Diana M. DiNitto & Namkee G. Choi, Marijuana Use Among Older
Adults in the USA: User Characteristics, Patterns of Use, and Implications for
Intervention, 23 Int’l Psychogeriatrics 732, 738 (2010) (noting that marijuana use
may increase psychological distress “by producing adverse reactions such as panic
and anxiety attacks and exacerbating existing mood disorders or psychosis,
especially among older adults”).

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norms of society” or would pose “an unacceptable risk of danger if armed.”6 Id. at
1127–28.
We now turn to Cordova Perez’s case. As to an individualized assessment, the
district court, whose ruling predated Cooper, found that Cordova Perez had actively
used marijuana at the same time he constructively or actually possessed his rifle, and
that he had “engaged in unpredictable and highly dangerous behavior while under
the influence of the drug.” The district court’s determination that Cordova Perez
acted dangerously while using marijuana gets close to foreclosing his as-applied
challenge under Veasley and Cooper. But because the district court and the parties
lacked Cooper’s guidance, the district court never made explicit findings in line with
that opinion.
First, the district court did not address whether marijuana caused Cordova
Perez to act “mentally ill and dangerous,” Veasley, 98 F.4th at 915, an inquiry
slightly different from the court’s finding that he acted violently or recklessly while
using marijuana. Analogizing to the “mentally ill and dangerous,” the proper
question is whether Cordova Perez’s marijuana use caused him to act in an outwardly
erratic or aggressive manner that would, in context, be reasonably perceived as
disturbing or dangerous to others.7 See id. at 917 (noting drug use can cause
6 For example, our circuit has yet to address whether those who carry a firearm
on their person while actively intoxicated could reasonably be seen to pose an
unacceptable danger to others, and thus render § 922(g)(3) constitutional as applied
to any member of that group. See Jackson, 110 F.4th at 1127–28; cf. Connelly, 117
F.4th at 281 (finding historical support for applying § 922(g)(3) to those who carry
weapons while intoxicated).
7 The historical sources we surveyed in Veasley do not delineate the specific
manifestations of mental illness thought at the Founding to justify someone’s
confinement—we lack detailed accounts, for example, of what exact behavior made
someone “furiously mad,” Act of Feb. 9, 1778 N.Y. Sess. Laws 645, “under
distraction and unfit to go at large,” Edward Warren Capen, The Historical
Development of the Poor Law of Connecticut 62–63 (1905) (describing Founding-
era Connecticut law allowing confinement), or “disorder’d in their Senses . . . to the

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“terrifying conduct” and citing Hadley v. Gutierrez, 526 F.3d 1324, 1327 (11th Cir.
2008), in which defendant acted erratically in grocery store while high on cocaine);
United States v. Daniels, 124 F.4th 967, 978 (5th Cir. 2025) (“[W]e leave open the
possibility that, for example, a heavy user of methamphetamine could potentially be
disarmed because of his regular use of a drug causing erratic behavior . . . .”). If
marijuana caused Cordova Perez to act or drive in an erratic way, for example, he
might be disarmed constitutionally under § 922(g)(3) even if his outward behavior
was not violent in the same way as, perhaps, the “combative hostility” sometimes
associated with “a drug like PCP.” See Veasley, 98 F.4th at 910 (quotation omitted);
see also Commonwealth v. Miller, 955 A.2d 419, 423 (Pa. Super. Ct. 2008) (finding
defendant’s drug impairment relevant to sustaining aggravated assault conviction
where defendant, high on marijuana, refused to pull over, led officers on chase, and
crashed car). And even if Cordova Perez normally used marijuana without issue,
marijuana could have triggered a single erratic or dangerous episode. E.g., People v.
Rutigliano, 156 N.E.3d 122, 132–33 (Ill. App. Ct. 2020) (discussing evidence that
defendant, who regularly used marijuana, smoked at a party, began to feel paranoid,
panicked, thought he would “be attacked or be killed,” and stabbed another partygoer
to death). The district court did not make any such causal finding in this case.
Second, the district court did not explicitly find that Cordova Perez’s
marijuana use—either that day or more broadly—caused him to “induce terror, or
pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others with a firearm.” Cooper, 127
F.4th at 1096 (citations and internal quotations omitted). For example, the district
court did not make an explicit finding that marijuana impaired Cordova Perez’s
Terror of their Neighbours,” Benjamin Franklin, Some Account of the Pennsylvania
Hospital 3 (I. Bernard Cohen ed., Johns Hopkins Press 1954). See Veasley, 98 F.4th
at 914–15 (discussing these sources). But these sources nonetheless described not
just violent behavior, but also erratic behavior that, despite not being dangerous,
would be reasonably perceived as such. See id. at 915 (“Society’s answer to mental
illness . . . was to lock up anyone who was ‘dangerous or disturbing to others.’”
(emphasis added) (quoting Dershowitz, supra, at 788)); see also Franklin, supra, at
3 (describing those whose mental illness makes them “a Terror to their Neighbors,
who are daily apprehensive of the Violences they may commit” (emphasis added)).

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decision-making on the day of the car chase such that it caused him to threaten
others’ safety, or that he induced terror by driving at high speeds while under the
influence of marijuana.
Nor did the district court ask if Cordova Perez’s marijuana use placed him in
a category of people “present[ing] a special danger of misuse” sufficient to justify
disarmament irrespective of any individualized showing of dangerousness. Jackson,
110 F.4th at 1129 (quoting Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 698). The district court found that
the entire category of drug users—including marijuana users like Cordova Perez—
may be constitutionally prohibited from firearm possession because Congress could
deem them as a class to presumptively pose a risk to others if armed. The government
makes a related argument on appeal. According to the government, all drugs can
cause dangerous behavior, both due to their effects on users and the violent crime
often appearing alongside their distribution and purchase. And more specifically,
marijuana can have effects—including on cognition, motor skills, and mood—that
“endanger public safety” such that § 922(g)(3) could constitutionally apply
categorically to those, like Cordova Perez, who use the drug.
But we have already held that without more, neither drug use generally nor
marijuana use specifically automatically extinguishes an individual’s Second
Amendment right.8 Cooper, 127 F.4th at 1097, 1098 n.3. And the government here
did not provide enough evidence to show that marijuana use alone could reasonably
be seen to make any user “an unacceptable risk of dangerousness” to others by
merely possessing a firearm.9 Jackson, 110 F.4th at 1129. Indeed, defining a class of
8 We express no view on whether disarmament may be constitutional for those
who use marijuana frequently, or who engage in high-risk activities while under the
influence of the drug—issues left open on remand. We also do not opine on whether
those who actively use marijuana while carrying a firearm on their person, or those
who actively use other controlled substances, could be disarmed categorically. See
Connelly, 117 F.4th at 281.
9 Nor is it clear on this record that marijuana use necessarily represents a
“disrespect for legal norms of society” sufficient for categorical disarmament. See

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drug users simply by the suggestion that they might sometimes be dangerous,
without more, is insufficient for categorical disarmament. See Cooper, 127 F.4th at
1096–97; see also Worth v. Jacobson, 108 F.4th 677, 694 (8th Cir. 2024) (rejecting
Minnesota ban on carrying firearms in public for 18 to 20-year-olds, noting that
“even using . . . recent statistics, it would be a stretch to say that an[y] 18-year-old
‘poses a clear threat of physical violence to another’” (quoting Rahimi, 602 U.S. at
698)).
We believe the district court is best positioned to reassess Cordova Perez’s as-
applied challenge in light of Cooper. See Cooper, 127 F.4th at 1098 (“Although both
sides invite us to resolve Cooper’s as-applied challenge, the district court is in the
best position to take the first crack at it.”). Accordingly, we vacate the judgment and
remand for the district court to determine—either individually or categorically, and
either on the trial record or, to the extent necessary, via an evidentiary hearing—
whether Cordova Perez’s marijuana use: 1) caused him to “act like someone who is
both mentally ill and dangerous”; or 2) would or did make him “induce terror, or
pose a credible threat to the physical safety of others with a firearm.” Id. at 1096
(citations and internal quotations omitted); see also Jackson, 110 F.4th at 1129
(noting that categories of people whose general behavior demonstrates sufficient
disrespect for legal norms or dangerousness can be disarmed without individualized
determinations).
As to any factual findings on remand, Cordova Perez raises a legitimate
concern that the jury, not the judge, must resolve factual disputes necessary to sustain
Jackson, 110 F.4th at 1127. Unlike many other controlled substances, marijuana use
has been legalized in numerous states and is widespread. Cf. Walcott v. Garland, 21
F.4th 590, 600 (9th Cir. 2021) (concluding that “[t]he widespread legalization of
marijuana makes it clear that offering to transport for sale a very small amount of
marijuana does not involve conduct that violates accepted moral standards”); Canna
Provisions, Inc. v. Bondi, 138 F.4th 602, 612 (1st Cir. 2025) (noting that “many
states have in recent times provided legislative protections for” marijuana
possession, cultivation, and use).

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his conviction. See United States v. Pope, 613 F.3d 1255, 1259 (10th Cir. 2010)
(“The jury is, of course, charged with determining the general issue of a defendant’s
guilt or innocence. Fact-finding by the district court based on evidence that goes to
this question can risk trespassing on territory reserved to the jury as the ultimate
finder of fact in our criminal justice system.”). We recognize the difficulties inherent
in this type of inquiry, made necessary by our developing case law. See Order
Granting Motion to Dismiss at 2, United States v. Cooper, No. 6:23-cr-02040-CJW-
MAR-1 (N.D. Iowa July 2, 2025), ECF No. 105 (expressing “concerns about the
practical implications” and unprecedented nature “of operating under an ad-hoc,
parallel system of judicial factfinding” in resolving as-applied challenges to
§ 922(g)(3)). However, at least some findings of dangerousness on an undisputed
record fall within the district court’s province and are typically separate from guilt
or innocence with respect to § 922(g)(3) itself.10 See United States v. Doss, No. 22-
3662, 2024 WL 3964616, at *1 n.2 (8th Cir. Aug. 28, 2024) (per curiam) (rejecting
posttrial as-applied challenge to § 922(g)(1) conviction and noting that “[i]t is safe
to say that [the defendant] ‘pose[s] a credible threat to the physical safety of others’”
based on record of violent convictions (third alteration in original) (quoting Rahimi,
602 U.S. at 700)). Here, two of the issues on remand are whether the trial record
demonstrates either that marijuana caused Cordova Perez to act like someone
“mentally ill and dangerous” or that his marijuana use caused him to induce terror
or pose a danger to others with a firearm. Cooper, 127 F.4th at 1096 (quotation
omitted). Of course, if such a finding requires resolving disputed facts “inevitably
bound up with evidence about the alleged offense itself,” then a retrial may be
necessary.11 See Turner, 842 F.3d at 605 (quoting United States v. Grimmett, 150
10 It may be, for example, that evidence relevant to an as-applied challenge to
§ 922(g)(3), if presented to a jury, would constitute otherwise inadmissible character
evidence with respect to other charged offenses. See Fed. R. Evid. 404.
11 While district courts may determine that jury instructions or special
interrogatories are necessary to answer this question in some situations, this will not
always be the case. See United States v. Turner, 842 F.3d 602, 605 (8th Cir. 2016);
see also United States v. Baxter, 127 F.4th 1087, 1090–91 (8th Cir. 2025)

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F.3d 958, 962 (8th Cir. 1998)); see also Daniels, 124 F.4th at 970, 975–76 (reversing
§ 922(g)(3) conviction because “[t]he jury did not necessarily find” potentially
disputed facts relevant to timing of defendant’s drug use).
We vacate and remand for further proceedings.
______________________________
(remanding for district court to determine whether Rule 12 hearing could resolve
defendant’s as-applied challenge to § 922(g)(3)).

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