Logic Goes Up In Smoke As Biden Seeks To Strip Marijuana Users Of Gun Rights

In a confusing, contradictory move, the Biden administration is seeking to deny gun rights to users of marijuana, arguing that marijuana users are inherently dangerous and unstable even though Biden has also stated he intends to pardon those convicted of marijuana possession because the drug poses no threat.

An Oklahoma federal judge last month struck down a federal law prohibiting marijuana users from possessing a firearm, ruling it was not “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” and that marijuana use is not grounds for loss of a constitutional right.

In that case, Oklahoma resident Jared Michael Harrison was arrested and charged with illegal gun possession after a traffic stop found a loaded handgun and marijuana in his car.  Harrison did not have a state-issued medical marijuana card and was charged with illegally possessing the firearm.

Harrison appealed, and U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick ruled that the federal law prohibiting firearm possession by a marijuana user “is not a constitutionally permissible means of disarming Harrison” and mere marijuana use or possession does not “justif(y) stripping him of his fundamental right to possess a firearm.”

“But the mere use of marijuana carries none of the characteristics that the nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation supports,” said Wyrick, citing the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Bruen v. New York that any restriction on gun rights must be consistent with tradition.

“A legislature could circumvent the Second Amendment by deeming every crime, no matter how minor, a felony, so as to deprive as many of its citizens of their right to possess a firearm as possible,” Wyrick wrote in his ruling.

“Imagine a world where the State of New York, to end-run the adverse judgment it received in Bruen, could make mowing one’s lawn a felony so that it could then strip all its newly deemed ‘felons’ of their right to possess a firearm,” Wyrick noted,

The Biden administration is appealing that ruling and seeking to reinstate gun bans for marijuana users. The appeal claims marijuana users are dangerous threats to public safety, at the same time Biden proposes pardoning those convicted of marijuana possession, on the grounds they’ve committed no crime.

“According to the Biden administration, the original understanding of the right to arms included exceptions broad enough to encompass people who consume any intoxicant that legislators might one day decide to prohibit,” Reason magazine reports. “It says the law criminalizing gun possession by cannabis consumers is analogous to laws targeting ‘intoxicated’ people who carry guns in public places.”

But that claim was blasted by Wyrick, who made note of the racist origins of gun control and drug prohibition.

“In trying to do so, Wyrick noted, the Justice Department had cited ‘ignominious historical restrictions’ that disarmed slaves, Catholics, loyalists, and Native Americans. He rejected the government’s argument that such precedents showed it was constitutional to withhold Second Amendment rights from any group that legislators deem ‘untrustworthy,’” Reason reports.

The case now goes to an appeals court. While appeals courts have generally upheld legislative restrictions on gun rights, the Bruen ruling may give the court grounds to uphold the decision.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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