Had Amendment 5 intended to prohibit lawmakers from regulating nonviolent felons, it would have simply said so, Stith wrote.

The opinion cited prior court rulings that found the state’s firearm possession charge “survives even the most stringent formulation of the strict scrutiny standard in that it is narrowly tailored to achieve a compelling state interest” — public safety.

Joyce’s office issued about 300 felon-in-possession cases from May to December 2015. It’s hard to say how many cases might have been affected by a contrary ruling, because the office has no way to track whether the prior offenses would be considered violent versus nonviolent.

That 300 does not include hundreds of cases in which felon in possession was a secondary charge.

The main opinion Tuesday involved the case of Pierre Clay, charged in February 2015 after being found a month earlier with a gun despite a prior conviction for unlawful use of a weapon. In April 2015, the charge was dismissed, based on challenges raised over Amendment 5.