United States v. Becker

── United States v. Becker ── Case No.: 24-1331 Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Date: March 09, 2026 Category: General Appellate Case: 24-1331 Document: 56 Date Filed: 03/09/2026 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals PUBLISH Tenth Circuit UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS March 9, 2026 Christopher M. Wolpert FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT Clerk of Court _________________________________ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee, v. No. 24-1331 MACKENZIE BECKER, Defendant - Appellant. _________________________________ Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado (D.C. No. 1:23-CR-00285-CNS-1) _________________________________ Perrin Tourangeau, Assistant Federal Public Defender (Virginia L. Grady, Federal Public Defender, with her on the briefs), Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant. Michael F. Houlihan, Assistant United States Attorney (Peter McNeilly, United States Attorney, with him on the briefs), Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee. _________________________________ Before HARTZ, TYMKOVICH, and McHUGH, Circuit Judges. _________________________________ HARTZ, Circuit Judge. _________________________________ After Defendant Mackenzie Becker apparently discharged a firearm during a road-rage incident, police executed two search warrants for an address associated with Defendant and found evidence used to convict him of firearms and drug charges. He now argues that the district court erred in denying his motion to suppress that  Appellate Case: 24-1331 Document: 56 Date Filed: 03/09/2026 Page: 2 evidence because the affidavit supporting the first warrant did not sufficiently link the road-rage incident to the address searched by the officers. He also contends that his conviction as a felon in possession of a firearm must be reversed because the statute of conviction, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1), violates the Second Amendment. We affirm. The affidavit established probable cause that evidence of the road- rage incident would be found at the searched house. One could reasonably infer that the house was a residence of Defendant’s because a search of law-enforcement databases attributed the address to him, and police surveillance corroborated the attribution: the car Defendant drove during the incident was parked in the house’s driveway and he was observed washing his car there and entering and exiting the house. Also, one could infer that Defendant would keep the firearm at his residence. That three weeks passed between the incident and the application for the warrant did not undermine that inference. And Defendant’s Second Amendment challenge is foreclosed by this court’s precedents. I. BACKGROUND The alleged road-rage incident occurred on February 13, 2023. Detective Gerald Sloan of the Denver Police Department investigated the incident. Detective Sloan’s affidavit for a search warrant described as follows the results of the investigation: The victim told officers that he observed a driver commit several egregious traffic violations while merging onto the interstate. When the victim pulled alongside the other driver to “speak” with him, the driver brandished a firearm. R., Vol. 1 at 37. 2  Appellate Case: 24-1331 Document: 56 Date Filed: 03/09/2026 Page: 3 Fearing for his safety, the victim drove t