A federal appeals court has ruled that the ban preventing people who use marijuana from possessing firearms is unconstitutional–the latest and highest-level blow to the long-standing federal prohibition that’s actively being challenged in a number of cases across the country.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel reversed the conviction of an individual who had been sentenced to almost four years behind bars after being stopped with firearms. The man admitted to using cannabis occasionally.
The U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, cited a Supreme Court ruling from 2022 that said any restrictions on firearms must be in line with the original context of the Second Amendment’s 1791 ratification. The judges said the federal government failed to provide a historical analogy to the marijuana ban.
“Throughout American History, laws have been passed to regulate the combination of firearms and intoxicating drugs. The appeals court stated that the government did not disarm people who had used alcohol or drugs at one point from owning guns later.
The opinion of Reagan’s U.S. Attorney General, Jerry Smith, states: “In summary, our history and traditions may support some limitations on the right to carry weapons by an intoxicated individual, but they do not justify disarming sober citizens based solely on their past drug use.” Circuit Judge Jerry Smith. “Nor does the more generalized tradition of disarming dangerous people support this restriction on drug users who are not violent.”
Kimberly Golden Gore said, during an oral argument, that Daniels was “serving 46-months in a federal prison for possessing less than half a grain of marijuana and two firearms which otherwise would have been lawful,” and that “history does not support such a permanent and total restriction of his Second Amendment rights.”
The court’s decision states that although the founding fathers of the Second Amendment “grew hemp for rope”, they were not “familiar with the widespread use of marijuana as a narcotic nor with the modern drug trade.”
The court’s jurisdiction covers Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
The court also disputed the Justice Department’s attempt to link regular marijuana use with firearm bans for people who are mentally ill. The judges said the analogy is relevant only to the possession of a firearm while actively impaired. And at no time did the Drug Enforcement Administration, which investigated the case claim that defendant Patrick Darnell Daniels Jr., was intoxicated at the time he was stopped in Mississippi, in April 2022.
The judges said that the argument of the government about Congress’ ability to disarm dangerous people is also wrong when it comes to marijuana prohibition.
“The Government identifies no category of people at the Founding or even during Reconstruction who were ‘dangerous,’ for reasons similar to marihuana consumers. Marihuana consumers are not perceived as political traitors like British Loyalists. They are not like Catholics or other religious dissenters, who were viewed as potential insurrectionists. Even if we look at the racially-discriminatory laws of the Founding, Daniels does not resemble the minorities that the Founders believed would threaten violent revolt.
“Furthermore they did not regulate ordinary drunkards, while disarming Catholics, and disaffected political citizens.” The ruling states that the government does not have a meaningful response to the fact neither Congress nor state governments disarmed alcoholics – the group closest to marihuana consumers in the 18th or 19th centuries. “As we did with the analogy of mental illness by the government, we have to ask: Are marihuana consumers more like British Loyalists in the Revolution or the current generation? Or repeat alcohol users? “The answer is definitely the latter.”
“We conclude by highlighting the narrowness and exclusivity of this holding. We don’t invalidate the law in its entirety, but rather, we only invalidate it as applied to Daniels. The majority opinion concluded that “a strong Second Amendment does not preclude other reasonable gun laws.” “Such statutes only need to be in line with what the Founding Generation understood as permissible limits when they ratified Second Amendment. The government has not demonstrated that in this case.”
Obama’s appointed U.S. Attorney General has issued a concurring opinion. Circuit Judge Stephen Higginson said that he “fully agrees” with the court’s opinion of the unconstitutionality the federal statute that was applied in Daniels’s case. However, he argued the Supreme Court decision on which the ruling is based had become problematic in other courts in the U.S. who have since struck down different gun restrictions amid a “continuing crisis of gun violence.”
We hold that, bound by this interpretational sequence, 18 U.S.C. The judge wrote that SS 922 (g)(3) is unconstitutional when applied to Mr. Daniels. “While our decision was limited, I cannot help but conclude that many, if no all, of the applications of SS922(g),(3) would be equally deficient.”
The court’s ruling could also mean that any “illegal user” of illicit drugs, including marijuana, is not covered by the law. This reasoning could be helpful in the case of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden. The government accused him under the federal gun law after he revealed that he regularly used crack cocaine at the time he bought a handgun.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys have cited a previous ruling by the U.S. District Court for Western District of Oklahoma, which similarly found the firearms prohibition for marijuana consumers to be unconstitutional. They argue that this ruling also applies to the case of their client. The Justice Department has appealed the district court’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Tenth Circuit.
Fifth Circuit Court said in the case that at one point the government could argue that “the drugs Daniels used are so powerful, anyone who uses them will be permanently impaired, in a manner that is comparable with ongoing mental illness.” Or it could “demonstrate Daniels’s regular and heavy drug use so that he is continually impaired.” This seems to open up the door to questions qualitative about other substances than cannabis.
The appeals court has made it clear that, in any event, the federal prohibition against firearms being used by cannabis consumers is invalid under recent precedent.
The latest successful challenge to the federal statute has been brought in the federal court.
In the Oklahoma federal case which the government is appealing Judge Patrick Wyrick dismissed the indictment of a man in 2022 who was charged with violating the law after police found cannabis and a gun in his car during a traffic check. The court also ruled that a law prohibiting “illegal” marijuana users from owning firearms was in violation of the Second Amendment.
Also, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas, a judge ruled in April that banning people who use marijuana from possessing firearms is unconstitutional–and it said that the same legal principle also applies to the sale and transfer of guns, too.
In Florida, a federal lawsuit is underway challenging the constitutionality of a firearm ban that applies to medical cannabis patients. Oral arguments are scheduled before the U.S. Court of Appeals of the Eleventh Circuit next month. The plaintiffs are appealing a district court ruling that ruled against them. The original lawsuit was filed by Nikki Fried, former Florida Agriculture commissioner (D), however her successor has refused to join the challenge after assuming office.
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The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has insisted that the ban on marijuana firearms is clear and enforceable, even in states where the drug has been legalized.
issued a warning shortly after Minnesota’s Governor signed into law a legalization measure in May. The agency reminded that cannabis users are prohibited from purchasing or possessing firearms and ammunition until the federal prohibition is lifted.
ATF will issue an advisory in 2020 that specifically targets Michigan and requires gun sellers conduct federal background checks for all unlicensed buyers. It said Michigan’s cannabis laws allowed “habitual marijuana consumers” and other disqualified persons to obtain firearms without a license.
Recently updated its cannabis employment policy, despite ATF’s insistence that it must enforce this ban.
The update make it so applicants who’ve grown, manufactured or sold marijuana in compliance with state laws while serving in a “position of public responsibility” will no longer be automatically disqualified–whereas those who did so in violation of state cannabis policies won’t be considered.
Two Republican members of Congress have introduced two bills in this session, focusing on marijuana and gun policy.
Rep. Brian Mast, co-chairman of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus and a member of the House of Representatives, introduced legislation in May that would protect the Second Amendment right of marijuana users in states where the drug is legal. This would allow them to buy and possess firearms, which they are currently prohibited to have under federal law.
Mast is also co-sponsoring in this session a separate Bill from Rep. Alex Mooney (R-WV), which would allow medical marijuana patients to buy and possess firearms.
A law passed in Arkansas earlier this month clarifies that medical cannabis patients are eligible to obtain concealed carry permits for firearms.
The first time Marijuana Moment published the post Federal Appeals Court Rules that Gun Ban for Marijuana Consumers is Unconstitutional.
