Federal Appeals Court Upholds Gun Free School Zones Law

The federal government may legally disarm at least some gun owners on or near school property.

That was the unanimous holding of a three-judge Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel on Monday. The panel upheld the conviction of a man charged with violating the Federal Gun Free School Zones Act by possessing an AR-15 in a vehicle he was living in 40 feet from a private catholic school. It ruled that the modern buffer zone around schools comported with historical analogues dating back nearly 700 years in England that prohibited possessing firearms in a manner that might “terrify the People.”

“The ‘why and how’ of 18 U.S.C. § 922(q)(2)(A), as applied to Allam, are ‘consistent with the principles that underpin our regulatory tradition,’” Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote in US v. Allam. “Put differently, ‘taken together,’ the historical analogues offered by the Government ‘establish that our tradition of firearm regulation supports the application of [§ 922(q)(2)(A)] to [Allam].’”

The ruling leaves intact one of the most expansive “sensitive places” restrictions for firearm possession in all of federal law. It deals a blow to Second Amendment advocates who have long felt that the law’s 1000-foot buffer zone around school property unduly infringes upon gun-carry rights. At the same time, the panel’s narrow ruling tailored to the specific fact pattern of the case may mitigate the fallout for gun-rights advocates.

The panel’s decision focused entirely on defendant Ahmed Abdalla Allam’s conduct surrounding his arrest.

According to the opinion, Allam left his family home in New York in August 2022 to embark on a cross-country road trip in an SUV that also served as his living quarters. He acquired an AR-15 along the way in Pennsylvania before eventually winding up in Beaumont, Texas, in early January 2023. While there, he began parking his car for “extended periods” next to St. Anthony Cathedral Basilica School, a pre-kindergarten through 8th-grade Catholic school. His continued presence near the school drew multiple requests from school officials, parents, and local police officers to move his vehicle over a period of several days.

During one confrontation by a school parent on a Sunday, Allam reportedly refused to leave because he said he had a “mission” and that “no one would ever see him again after Monday.” The parent, alarmed by the perceived threat and under suspicion that Allam had a gun, called local police to watch Allam’s vehicle.

When he began to drive away later that day, an officer pulled him over for a traffic violation. He was uncooperative, resulting in his arrest. A search of his vehicle later recovered the AR-15, 150 rounds of ammunition, and a loaded thirty-round magazine. Police also found “children’s clothing,” marijuana residue, cocaine, and videos in his phone that showed “dead and dismembered cats,” “Allam gutting cats and pulling out their entrails with his hands,” and Allam “lighting [a] cat on fire.”

The following month, he was indicted for possession of a firearm in a school zone, a charge he contested as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment both facially and as applied to him. The district court rejected his claims, and he was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 60 months in prison. He then appealed the district court’s ruling only as it related to his as-applied challenge.

Reviewing his appeal, the Fifth Circuit panel first concluded that the plain text of the Second Amendment covered Allam’s conduct.

“Weighed against the second part of Bruen’s standard, however, Allam’s claim comes up wanting,” Judge Wilson, a Donald Trump appointee, wrote.

The panel honed in on the federal government’s invocation of the 1328 Statute of Northampton, as well as subsequent versions that became incorporated into American common law, as a suitable analogue to the modern school zone gun ban. These “affray” laws generally prohibited “riding or going armed” in public places “to the terror of the people.”

“Though perhaps not a ‘dead ringer’ or ‘historical twin’ of modern ‘buffer zone’ restrictions on firearm possession, the Statute of Northampton is nonetheless of a type of historical location-based regulation relevantly similar to § 922(q)(2)(A)’s application to Allam,” Wilson wrote.

He said the “why” behind the enactment of the Gun Free School Zones Act—general concern about crime and gun violence at schools and parents being afraid to send their kids to school for that reason—matches the rationale of restricting those who carry firearms “to the terror of people.” He said “how” the laws limit the presence of firearms was also relevantly similar.

“Section 922(q)(2)(A) delimits schools and buffer zones around them as areas in which firearms may not be carried, subject to significant enumerated exceptions that materially ameliorate the restriction of the right,” Wilson said. “This roughly maps with how the Statute of Northampton’s various location-based restrictions generally operated in practice, as well as the behavior the going-armed laws proscribed.”

Finally, the panel emphasized that its opinion was to be construed only as upholding the federal ban based on Allam’s behavior and not necessarily in other applications.

“We need not—and do not—fix how far a buffer zone may stretch before it runs afoul of the Second Amendment to decide Allam’s as-applied claim,” Wilson wrote. “We offer no opinion regarding the constitutionality of § 922(q)(2)(A) in any other context.”