USCA4 Appeal: 22-4541 Doc: 64 Filed: 05/14/2025 Pg: 1 of 16
PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
No. 22-4541
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,
Plaintiff – Appellee,
v.
DAVID KEITH NUTTER,
Defendant – Appellant.
------------------------------
FOURTH CIRCUIT FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDERS,
Amicus Supporting Appellant. .
Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, at Charleston. Irene C. Berger, District Judge. (2:21-cr-00142-1)
Argued: March 19, 2025 Decided: May 14, 2025
Before KING, AGEE, and HARRIS, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Agee wrote the opinion in which Judge King and Judge Harris joined.
ARGUED: Lex A. Coleman, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. William Andrew Glaser, UNITED STATES USCA4 Appeal: 22-4541 Doc: 64 Filed: 05/14/2025 Pg: 2 of 16
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Wesley P. Page, Federal Public Defender, Jonathan D. Byrne, Appellate Counsel, OFFICE OF THE FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. Nicole M. Argentieri, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Lisa H. Miller, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Mahogane D. Reed, Appellate Section, Criminal Division, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, Washington, D.C.; William S. Thompson, United States Attorney, Andrew J. Tessman, Assistant United States Attorney, OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES ATTORNEY, Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellee.
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AGEE, Circuit Judge:
David Nutter argues that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9) violates the Second Amendment.
We disagree and therefore affirm his conviction for violating that statute.
I.
In August 2021, Nutter was indicted for violating § 922(g)(9), which prohibits
individuals with convictions for “misdemeanor crime[s] of domestic violence” from
possessing, “in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition.” § 922(g)(9). The term
“misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” is defined in § 921(a)(33). With various caveats
either not at issue in this case or that will be discussed below, that term means “an offense
that . . . is a misdemeanor under Federal, State, Tribal, or local law” and “has, as an element,
the use or attempted use of physical force, or the threatened use of a deadly weapon”
committed by certain individuals in specified familial, cohabitation, or dating relationships
with the victim. § 921(a)(33)(A).
Nutter’s indictment specified that he had three such prior convictions in Ohio that
brought him within § 922(g)(9)’s class of persons prohibited from possessing firearms.
Those convictions are: (1) a July 1998 conviction for domestic violence on a family or
household member, in violation of Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2919.25; (2) an August 2002
conviction for domestic violence on a family or household member felony in the fifth
degree, in violation of Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2919.25(A); and (3) an August 2002
conviction for endangering children (child abuse), in violation of Ohio Rev. Code Ann.
§ 2919.22(B)(1).
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Nutter acknowledged that he possessed the firearms identified in the present
indictment and did not dispute that he had the foregoing Ohio convictions. Nonetheless, he
moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that § 922(g)(9) was unconstitutional because it
violated the Second Amendment. 1
Applying District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and this Court’s then-
applicable means-end analysis that it had adopted in Heller’s wake, the district court denied
Nutter’s motion. The parties then entered a conditional plea agreement that allowed Nutter
to appeal the denial of his motion to dismiss the indictment, and the district court accepted
Nutter’s guilty plea.
A few weeks after the guilty plea hearing, but before Nutter’s sentencing hearing,
the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1
(2022). That decision “rejected . . . as involving ‘one step too many’” the means-end
analysis that this and other courts had adopted when reviewing Second Amendment
challenges post-Heller. United States v. Price, 111 F.4th 392, 398 (4th Cir. 2024) (en banc)
(quoting Bruen, 597 U.S. at 19). Given Bruen’s holding, Nutter filed a second motion to
dismiss his indictment, arguing that under the Supreme Court’s framework for analyzing
Second Amendment claims, § 922(g)(9) violated the Constitution.
The district court denied the motion, concluding that § 922(g)(9) “fits easily within”
the Nation’s history and tradition of disarming categories of individuals deemed to be “a
1 Nutter originally had argued that his Ohio convictions did not meet the statutory definition of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.” The district court rejected that argument, and Nutter has not raised that issue on appeal, so it is not before us. 4 USCA4 Appeal: 22-4541 Doc: 64 Filed: 05/14/2025 Pg: 5 of 16
threat to the public safety” and thus satisfied Bruen’s inquiry. United States v. Nutter, 624
F. Supp. 3d 636, 643 (S.D.W. Va. 2022) (internal quotations omitted). In the court’s view,
“[n]othing in the historical record suggest[ed] a popular understanding of the Second
Amendment at the time of the founding that extended to preserving gun rights for groups
who pose a particular risk of using firearms against innocent people.” Id. at 645. In light of
its conclusion, the court denied Nutter’s motion, leaving his guilty plea intact. Nutter’s plea
agreement was modified, however, to reserve his right to appeal the denial of his second
motion to dismiss.
The district court sentenced Nutter to twelve months’ imprisonment and three years’
supervised release.
Nutter noted a timely appeal, and the Court has jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
We placed Nutter’s appeal in abeyance after the Supreme Court granted a petition
for certiorari in United States v. Rahimi, No. 22-915, because that case raised a post-Bruen
challenge to the constitutionality of a similar subsection of 18 U.S.C. § 922(g). In Rahimi,
the Supreme Court discussed Bruen on its way to upholding the constitutionality of 18
U.S.C. § 922(g)(8) against a challenge under the Second Amendment. 602 U.S. 680, 702
(2024). When removing Nutter’s case from abeyance, we ordered supplemental briefing so
that the parties could address that case and any other relevant intervening authorities.
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II.
A.
Before addressing the merits of Nutter’s argument, we first define its scope. When
questioned at oral argument, Nutter maintained that he was raising both a facial and as-
applied challenge to § 922(g)(9). Our review of Nutter’s appellate briefs shows otherwise:
he raised only a facial challenge.
Nutter’s opening brief articulated the sole issue on appeal in terms of a facial
challenge, asking the Court to decide “[w]hether 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), analyzed in the
light of [Bruen], violates the Second Amendment, such that the district court should have
granted Nutter’s motion to dismiss the indictment charging him with unlawful possession
of firearms after having been convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence two
decades prior.” Opening Br. 1. Thus framed by Nutter from the outset of his appeal, the
issue presented to this Court is whether § 922(g)(9) itself violates the Second Amendment.
That is, whether prosecutions under that provision are ever constitutional. He did not raise
the separate question of whether it would violate the Second Amendment to convict him
under § 922(g)(9) under the unique facts of his case, because anyone convicted under
§ 922(g)(9) will necessarily have been convicted of at least one misdemeanor crime of
domestic violence.
Consistent with how he presented the sole issue, the argument section of Nutter’s
opening brief addressed how Bruen changed the framework for analyzing Second
Amendment challenges, why the Nation’s history and tradition did “not support the
disarmament of domestic abusers,” Opening Br. 25, and why dicta from Heller did not
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compel a contrary result. And Nutter’s brief concluded in kind, asserting, “Nutter’s
conduct, the simple possession of firearms, is protected by the Second Amendment and
there is no deeply-rooted history or tradition in this country of disarming those, like Nutter,
who have prior convictions for misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence.” Opening Br.
38. 2
Similarly, Nutter asserted that § 922(g)(9) is unconstitutional “facially or as applied
to” him at two places in his supplemental opening brief. Supp. Opening Br. 2, 3. But his
arguments in that brief once again asserted only the facial unconstitutionality of
§ 922(g)(9). E.g., Supp. Opening Br. 2 (“Rahimi is a narrow decision that does not make
§ 922(g)(9) constitutional.”).
Under this Court’s precedent, Nutter has waived any as-applied challenge to his
conviction. He did not raise an as-applied challenge in his opening brief. Grayson O Co. v.
Agadir Int’l LLC, 856 F.3d 307, 316 (4th Cir. 2017) (“A party waives an argument by
failing to present it in its opening brief.”). Nutter’s fleeting and generalized reference to it
in his supplemental opening brief was both untimely (given that we had not authorized him
to expand the issues on review) and insufficient. United States v. Bowles, 602 F.3d 581,
583 n.* (4th Cir. 2010) (observing that an argument raised for the first time in a
supplemental brief, and which could have been raised in the initial opening brief, is
waived); Grayson O Co., 856 F.3d at 316 (stating that a party also waives an argument “by
While “magic words” are not needed, we further note that the phrase “as applied 2
to” Nutter appear only in the procedural history section when quoting his first, pre-Bruen, motion to dismiss. Opening Br. 3. 7 USCA4 Appeal: 22-4541 Doc: 64 Filed: 05/14/2025 Pg: 8 of 16
failing to develop its argument—even if its brief takes a passing shot at the issue” (cleaned
up)). So too an argument first raised at oral argument is usually untimely. United States v.
Cornell, 780 F.3d 616, 625 n.2 (4th Cir. 2015).
For these reasons, Nutter’s appeal is limited to whether § 922(g)(9) is facially
unconstitutional. We leave for another case the question of whether or when as-applied
challenges to § 922(g)(9) can be made. See, e.g., United States v. Canada, 123 F.4th 159,
161 (4th Cir. 2024) (holding § 922(g)(1) constitutional on its face, noting that Canada had
“expressly disclaimed any sort of as-applied challenge,” and thus leaving for another day
whether or when an as-applied challenge to § 922(g)(1) could proceed).
B.
In Rahimi, the Supreme Court reiterated that a facial challenge “is the ‘most difficult
challenge to mount successfully,’ because it requires a defendant to ‘establish that no set
of circumstances exists under which the Act would be valid.’” 602 U.S. at 693 (quoting
United States v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739, 745 (1987)). “That means that to prevail, the
Government need only demonstrate that [§ 922(g)(9)] is constitutional in some of its
applications.” Id. (emphasis added).
C.
On appeal, Nutter maintains that § 922(g)(9) is sufficiently different from
§ 922(g)(8) such that the Court cannot reflexively rely on Rahimi’s reasoning for upholding
the constitutionality of § 922(g)(8) to uphold the facial constitutionality of § 922(g)(9). For
example, he observes that Rahimi addressed a prohibition, § 922(g)(8), that was necessarily
time limited because it regulates individuals with a then-effective restraining order based
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on domestic violence, while § 922(g)(9) permits the permanent disarmament of an
individual found to have committed an array of violent misdemeanor offenses. He also
contends that qualifying restraining orders under § 922(g)(8) require findings about the
actual or intended use of force while a conviction for some qualifying misdemeanor crimes
of violence under § 922(g)(9) may be predicated on a lesser finding of reckless offensive
touching. In view of these distinguishing characteristics, Nutter asserts that Rahimi’s
analysis of historical analogues supporting the constitutionality of § 922(g)(8) does not
dictate the outcome in this case.
With Rahimi thus cabined, Nutter argues that § 922(g)(9) lacks an adequate
foundation in the Nation’s history and tradition to show that it is consistent with the Second
Amendment. In his view, disarming certain misdemeanants is a relatively recent
development for which there is no well-defined historical precedent. Because general
concerns of dangerousness—itself an amorphous concept—is not enough under Bruen or
Rahimi to support disarmament, Nutter maintains that § 922(g)(9) has no relevantly similar
historical analogues that would support its constitutionality. And, as such, he urges the
Court to vacate his convictions and reverse the district court’s denial of his motion to
dismiss the indictment.
D.
We begin with the text of the Second Amendment, which states: “A well regulated
Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and
bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” U.S. Const. amend. II.
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In Bruen, the Supreme Court instructed that courts are to apply a “two-step
evaluation” to determine whether a provision violates the Second Amendment. Price, 111
F.4th at 398 (quoting Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 744 (Jackson, J., concurring)). “First, we must
ask whether the Second Amendment’s plain text covers the conduct at issue. If not, that
ends the inquiry: the Second Amendment does not apply.” Id. “But if it does, then, second,
we must ask whether the Government has justified the regulation as consistent with the
‘principles that underpin’ our nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” Id.
(quoting Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692).
1.
The parties have not spilled ink on Bruen’s first step, and we need not do so either. 3
When considering the facial constitutionality of § 922(g)(8), Rahimi skipped Bruen’s first
step and proceeded directly to the second step. 602 U.S. at 693–94. That alone could
support our taking a similar approach here.
In any event, we observe, as we did in Canada, that we “need not—and thus do
not—resolve whether” the constitutionality of this provision “turns on the definition of the
‘people’ at step one of Bruen” because it “has a plainly legitimate sweep,” regardless of
3 The Government initially proffered one argument related to Bruen’s first step: that Nutter’s challenge failed because individuals convicted under this provision are not “law-abiding, responsible” citizens to whom the Second Amendment applies. But in supplemental briefing, it abandoned that argument in light of Rahimi’s rejection of a similar argument. See Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 701–02 (rejecting the Government’s argument that Rahimi was not a member of “the class of ordinary citizens who undoubtedly enjoy the Second Amendment right” because he was “not ‘responsible,’” because neither Heller nor Bruen defined this “vague term” or said anything “about the status of citizens who were not ‘responsible’”).
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how we answer this inquiry. 123 F.4th at 161 (cleaned up). If individuals to whom
§ 922(g)(9) applies are not part of “the people,” then this provision is constitutional under
step one of Bruen. If individuals to whom § 922(g)(9) applies are part of “the people,” then
the analysis would turn to step two. Our analysis of step two, which follows below, reveals
that there are some circumstances in which § 922(g)(9) is constitutional, meaning that it
“has a plainly legitimate sweep.” Canada, 123 F.4th at 161 (cleaned up). Thus, regardless
of how the first step analysis would be resolved here, the statute survives Nutter’s facial
challenge.
2.
Turning to the second step of Bruen, we are instructed to consider whether
§ 922(g)(9) “is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” 597
U.S. at 24. If it is, then it falls outside the scope of the Second Amendment. Id. Rahimi
cautioned that when courts undertake this historical inquiry, they are not looking for “a
‘dead ringer’ or a ‘historical twin’” to the challenged provision, but rather for a “historical
analogue.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 692, 701; id. at 691 (stating that the Court’s Second
Amendment cases “were not meant to suggest a law trapped in amber”).
The Rahimi Court applied these principles to hold that § 922(g)(8) was facially
constitutional. In reaching that conclusion, it relied on two separate regulatory concepts—
surety and going armed laws—that, in its view, demonstrated a tradition of disarming
“those found by a court to present a threat to others.” Id. at 698; see also id. at 694–98
(tracing this history). The Court further acknowledged that these historical analogues were
“by no means identical to” § 922(g)(8),” but then observed that they “do[] not need to be.”
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Id. at 698. It was sufficient that they were all “‘relevantly similar’ . . . in both why and how
[they] burden[] the Second Amendment right,” i.e., they were tailored “to mitigat[ing]
demonstrated threats of physical violence” and did “not broadly restrict arms use by the
public generally.” Id. Moreover, both the historical analogues and § 922(g)(8) “involved
judicial determinations of whether a particular defendant likely would threaten or had
threatened another with a weapon.” Id. at 699. And the Supreme Court noted that just as
surety bonds were “of limited duration,” § 922(g)(8) was also temporary, based on the
duration of the restraining order (in Rahimi’s case, effective for one to two years after
release from prison).
3.
Applying Bruen and Rahimi, to this case, we hold that § 922(g)(9) is facially
constitutional. In short, Nutter has failed to show “that no set of circumstances exists under
which [it] would be valid.” Salerno, 481 U.S. at 745; see Wash. State Grange v. Wash.
State Republican Party, 552 U.S. 442, 449 (2008) (describing the Salerno standard as
requiring “the law [to be] unconstitutional in all of its applications” to succeed on a facial
challenge).
We do so for many of the same reasons the Supreme Court held § 922(g)(8)
constitutional in Rahimi, and agree with the Sixth Circuit’s recent application of Bruen and
Rahimi to uphold the constitutionality of § 922(g)(9) in United States v. Gailes, 118 F.4th
822 (6th Cir. 2024). Accord United States v. Bernard, No. 23-2808, --- F.4th ---, 2025 WL
1352398 (8th Cir. May 5, 2025) (holding § 922(g)(9) is constitutional on its face under the
Second Amendment).
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At its core, Rahimi held that “our Nation’s tradition of firearm regulation
distinguishes citizens who have been found to pose a credible threat to the physical safety
of others from those who have not” and “allows the Government to disarm individuals who
present a credible threat to the physical safety of others.” 602 U.S. at 700. “Section
922(g)(9), which categorically disarms individuals with valid, domestic-violence
convictions, fits well within this historical tradition.” Gailes, 118 F.4th at 828. As the
definition of a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence” confirms, every individual that
§ 922(g)(9) would disarm has been convicted of an offense in which they had been
adjudicated by a court of law to have used or attempted to use physical force or threatened
the use of deadly force against their victim. § 921(a)(33)(A).
Consequently, the historical regulatory tradition Rahimi relied on to uphold the
constitutionality of § 922(g)(8) under Bruen’s framework is materially indistinguishable
from how that same tradition would apply to § 922(g)(9). As was true of § 922(g)(8), when
enacting § 922(g)(9), Congress was “restrict[ing] gun use to mitigate demonstrated threats
of physical violence, just as surety and going armed laws do.” Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 698.
And although none of the Founding Era limitations Rahimi relied on match § 922(g)(9)
any more than they did § 922(g)(8), Rahimi made it clear that they need not do so to be
“relevantly similar” for purposes of Bruen. 602 U.S. at 692. An “analogue” suffices. Id. at
692, 701. Thus, as was true in Rahimi, § 922(g)(9)’s purpose and method—i.e., its “why”
and the “how”—fall within the Nation’s historical tradition. Id. at 700–01.
Nor do we find persuasive Nutter’s attempts to force daylight between the salient
analysis of § 922(g)(8) and § 922(g)(9). True, Rahimi noted the temporary nature of the
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restraining order at issue in § 922(g)(8) as part of its reasoning. E.g. 602 U.S. at 699, 702.
But that does not meaningfully distinguish § 922(g)(9), at least with regard to a facial
challenge, because it still has a “plainly legitimate sweep.” Wash. State Grange, 552 U.S.
at 449 (internal quotations omitted). Put differently, § 922(g)(9)’s facial constitutionality
does not falter in light of this temporal argument because some § 922(g)(9) convictions are
brought within relatively close proximity to the predicate misdemeanor conviction and
additional fact-specific circumstances—such as the nature or number of the offenses—
could otherwise support disarmament. The facts of Gailes provide one such clear example
even though the legal issue before the court was solely a facial challenge to § 922(g)(9).
There, the Sixth Circuit encountered a “serial perpetrator of domestic violence” who had
two predicate convictions, the underlying facts giving rise to those convictions involved
violent conduct that included kicking and choking his victim, and both convictions were
within a “few years” of the subsequent § 922(g)(9) charges. 118 F.4th at 823–24. This
combination of facts demonstrates a plainly permissible prosecution under Rahimi, which
means that Nutter has not satisfied Salerno’s “no set of circumstances” standard for
showing that a statute is facially unconstitutional. Arguments that a prior conviction should
not permanently ban an individual from possessing firearms based on the amount of time
that has lapsed since a conviction or a defendant’s purported rehabilitation are better suited
to as-applied challenges or as policy arguments to Congress to advocate amending the
statutory language. They are not concerns that would render § 922(g)(9) unconstitutional
on its face.
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Additional reasons for rejecting Nutter’s temporal argument also exist. For example,
it ignores that § 922(g)(9) applies only to individuals who have a qualifying conviction for
a “misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.” And § 921(a)(33)(A) defines this term of art
in a way that demonstrates that § 922(g)(9)’s scope is not a per se permanent ban. Among
other things, it would not prohibit firearm possession by those whose convictions have
been set aside, pardoned, or expunged, nor would it apply to those who have had their civil
rights fully restored, unless the condition of any of those events expressly prohibited
firearms-related conduct. § 921(a)(33)(B)(ii). Moreover, if the underlying conviction
involved a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence “against an individual in a dating
relationship,” then the conviction would exclude the defendant from § 922(g)(9)’s scope
“if 5 years have elapsed from the later of the judgment of conviction or the completion of
the person’s custodial or supervisory sentence, if any, and the person has not subsequently
been convicted of another such offense.” § 921(a)(33)(C).
Further, Nutter’s temporal argument also discounts that, at least in part, the Supreme
Court’s concern with the temporal limits of § 922(g)(8) related to the correspondingly
lower standards that apply to obtain a restraining order, while § 922(g)(9)’s longer
prohibition flows from a correspondingly higher standard to obtaining a conviction. As the
Sixth Circuit observed, “[i]f someone who is merely accused of committing domestic
violence can be disarmed without offending the Second Amendment, then a fortiori
someone with a valid conviction can also be disarmed.” Gailes, 118 F.4th at 829. Accord
§ 921(a)(33)(A)–(B)(i) (setting out certain procedural protections regarding what sort of
offenses and convictions satisfy the meaning of § 922(g)(9)). For these reasons, Nutter has
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not shown that his argument concerning the length of time an individual may be prohibited
from possessing a firearm under § 922(g)(9) compromises its facial constitutionality.
Last, Nutter’s argument about the requisite factual findings underlying a
misdemeanor crime of violence conviction also fails to cast doubt on the facial validity of
§ 922(g)(9). Once again, we turn to the high burden Nutter faces when bringing a facial
challenge. As the Gailes court opined, “[w]e need not mull over all the predicate
convictions that could subject one to disarmament under § 922(g)(9) because [the
defendant] raises only a facial challenge to the statute. Because there are numerous
domestic-violence misdemeanors that do involve violent, physical contact, our Nation’s
history and tradition support our conclusion that § 922(g)(9) ‘is constitutional in some of
its applications.’” 118 F.4th at 829 (quoting Rahimi, 602 U.S. at 693) (first internal citation
omitted). We agree.
III.
For the reasons set forth above, we hold that § 922(g)(9) survives Nutter’s facial
challenge and is constitutional. Therefore, the district court did not err in denying his
motion to dismiss the indictment, and his judgment of conviction is
AFFIRMED.