Two U.S. federal District Court judges have ruled that the national ban on gun possession by cannabis users violates the Second Amendment of the Constitution.
Another Federal Judge Rejects the DOJ's Argument That Cannabis Consumers Have No Second Amendment Rights | Reason = Jacpb Sullm:
April 11, 2023 - "A federal judge in Texas recently agreed with a federal judge in Oklahoma that the national ban on gun possession by cannabis consumers violates the Second Amendment. Kathleen Cardone, a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, also concluded that the federal ban on transferring firearms to an 'unlawful user' of a 'controlled substance,' first imposed by the Gun Control Act of 1968, is unconstitutional. The case involves Paola Connelly, who was charged with illegal possession of firearms under 18 USC 922(g)(3) after El Paso police found marijuana and guns in her home while responding to a domestic disturbance in December 2021.... Both gun offenses are punishable by up to 15 years in prison....
"Cardone held that Connelly's Second Amendment claims were not precluded by prior decisions in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which includes Texas, upheld Section 922(g)(3). Those decisions, she noted, preceded the Supreme Court's June 2022 ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.... Last February in United States v. Rahimi, the 5th Circuit concluded that Bruen required it to reconsider decisions upholding the federal ban on gun possession by people subject to domestic violence restraining orders. By the same logic, Cardone says in an order published last week, the 5th Circuit's precedents regarding Section 922(g)(3) are no longer binding.
"[T]he Biden administration argued that the gun ban for marijuana users meets the Bruen test because it is 'relevantly similar' to colonial and state laws forbidding people to publicly use or carry guns while intoxicated. Like U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick, who deemed that ban unconstitutional in an Oklahoma case last February [see video], Cardone was unpersuaded by that analogy.... A 1655 Virginia law, for example, prohibited 'shoot[ing] any gunns at drinkeing (marriages and ffuneralls onely excepted)'... State laws enacted in the 19th century likewise were aimed at people who publicly carried or fired guns when they were drunk. By contrast, Section 922(g)(3) covers all cannabis consumers, including those who live in states that have legalized marijuana, even when they are not intoxicated, and it applies to private as well as public possession....
"The government also argued that Section 922(g)(3) is consistent with a purported tradition of disarming 'unvirtuous' people.... Cardone ... notes colonial-era jurist William Blackstone's distinction between 'public and private vices': While the former are subject to the 'punishments of human tribunals,' he said, the latter are subject only to 'eternal justice.' Blackstone explicitly applied that distinction to drunkenness. 'Connelly's alleged drug use more resembles private drinking than public drunkenness, casting doubt on the idea that history supports criminalizing or disarming her for this behavior,' Cardone writes....
"Cardone was equally unimpressed by the government's argument that Connelly was disqualified from owning guns because she was not 'law-abiding'.... [M]arijuana use ... is a nonviolent misdemeanor, and 'no one even today reads [Second Amendment history] to support the disarmament of literally all criminals, even nonviolent misdemeanants'.... Cardone is quoting a 2019 dissent that Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit. Barrett argued that the federal ban on gun possession by people with nonviolent felony records sweeps too broadly. In making that case, she took it for granted that a nonviolent misdemeanor is not nough to justify depriving someone of his Second Amendment rights....
"Cardone also notes that Section 922(g)(3), unlike restrictions that hinge on a conviction or a judicial order, deprives people of their Second Amendment rights 'without a hearing or any preliminary showing from the Government.' They 'must choose to either stop their marijuana use, forgo possession of a firearm, or ... face up to fifteen years in federal prison'....
"[C]ases challenging the constitutionality of Section 922(g)(3) will soon be considered by three federal appeals courts: the 5th Circuit, the 10th Circuit, and the 11th Circuit. Assuming they reach different conclusions, the Supreme Court is apt to intervene, decisively settling the question of whether the right to keep and bear arms includes an exception for people who dare to consume a psychoactive substance that legislators deemed intolerable more than two centuries after the Second Amendment was ratified."
New Gun Law Allows Marijuana Users to Legally Own Guns | USCCA, February 7, 2023:
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