A federal appeals court panel has dismissed a three-year prison sentence against a person convicted for possession of a firearm while being an active user of marijuana, ruling that the federal government’s prohibition on gun ownership by drug users is justified only in certain circumstances—not always.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said in its opinion issued on Wednesday that while not all disarmament of drug users violates the Second Amendment, it nevertheless sometimes can.
“Nothing in our tradition allows disarmament simply because [the defendant] belongs to a category of people, drug users, that Congress has categorically deemed dangerous,” the ruling says.
Judges returned the matter to a lower court to determine whether the law as applied in the current case is constitutional, noting that further fact-finding is likely necessary and that “the district court is in the best position to take the first crack at it.”
The case arose after police found a Glock pistol in the car of the defendant, who acknowledged at trial that he smoked marijuana three to four times per week, including two days before the traffic stop. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa found him guilty and subsequently sentenced him to 37 months behind bars.
In weighing whether the government’s actions were constitutional, judges looked for historical analogues to the prohibition on gun ownership by drug users. While government lawyers argued that the ban is justified because of past laws against gun ownership by people with mental illness, the appellate panel noted that those laws typically required that a person be deemed both mentally ill and dangerous—and even then, prohibitions were considered on a case-by-case basis.
“Neither confinement of the mentally ill nor the going-armed laws operated on an irrebuttable basis,” the opinion says. “In fact, each had an individualized assessment built in.”
“Sometimes disarming drug users and addicts will line up with the case-by-case historical tradition, but other times it will not,” it continues. “The district court’s task on remand is to figure out which side of the Second Amendment line [the defendant’s] case falls on.”
Judges used two hypotheticals to illustrate when the gun ban is sufficiently similar to past firearm restrictions to be deemed constitutional: a violent PCP user and a frail grandmother who uses medical marijuana and owns a shotgun for home defense.
“For disarmament of drug users and addicts to be comparably ‘justifi[ed],’ it must be limited to those who ‘pose a danger to others,’” the panel wrote, quoting prior court decisions. “The analogy is complete, in other words, for someone whose ‘regular use[] of … PCP … induce[s] violence,’ but not for a ‘frail and elderly grandmother’ who ‘uses marijuana for a chronic medical condition.’”
“The lesson to draw is that this analogy only works ‘for some drug users,’” it added. “When ‘a court has found that the defendant ‘represents a credible threat,” a ban on firearm possession ‘fits neatly within the tradition.’”
Judges acknowledged that both sides in the case invited the appeals court to decide the defendant’s underlying challenge to his indictment rather than send it back to the district court. But the panel’s opinion says that the “factual record is thin, given that the case proceeded to a bench trial on stipulated facts, so the parties may want to supplement the record with other evidence.”
In closing, the court said it would “tie up a loose end to save everyone time on remand,” noting that the government itself suggested that the defendant possessed the firearm for personal protection and that “‘individual self-defense is ‘the central component‘ of the Second Amendment right,’ not an exception to it.”
In recent years, the federal criminal statue known as 922(g)(3)—which prevents anyone who is an “unlawful user” of an illegal drug from buying or possessing firearms—has come under fire in a number of federal courts.
Earlier this year, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the firearms ban was unconstitutional as applied to least one defendant, Patrick Daniels. That ruling came on the heels of a string of other judicial decisions casting doubt on the legality of the ban.
The situation has caused confusion among medical marijuana patients, state lawmakers and advocacy groups, among others. The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) lobbying arm said recently that the court rulings on the cannabis and guns issue have “led to a confusing regulatory landscape” that have impacted Americans’ Second Amendment rights.
“Marijuana use is no longer limited to the domain of indigenous religious customs or youth-oriented counterculture and now includes a wide variety of people who use it for medicinal or recreational reasons,” said the advocacy group, which does not have an official stance on cannabis policy generally. “Many of these individuals are otherwise law-abiding and productive members of their communities and want to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.”
Separately, a federal judge in El Paso recently ruled that the government’s ongoing ban on gun ownership by habitual marijuana users is unconstitutional in the case of a defendant who earlier pleaded guilty to the criminal charge. The court allowed the man to withdraw the plea and ordered that the indictment against him be dismissed.
Another panel of judges, on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, heard oral arguments in November in the government’s appeal of a district court ruling that deemed the gun ban unconstitutional.
Much of the panel’s discussion at oral argument in that case surrounded whether the underlying dispute was a facial challenge to the gun ban or an as-applied challenge. And, as in other cases, judges zeroed in on whether or not that defendant was actually under the influence of marijuana while in possession of a firearm.
In a separate federal court case, Department of Justice (DOJ) lawyers recently made arguments that the ongoing firearm restriction for cannabis users is “analogous to laws disarming the intoxicated” and other historical laws “disarming many disparate groups that the government believed presented a danger with firearms.”
That brief was the latest response to a case filed by a Pennsylvania prosecutor who’s suing the federal government over its ban on gun ownership by cannabis users. It came two weeks after lawyers for the official, Warren County District Attorney Robert Greene, asked the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania to allow the matter to proceed to trial.
In a number of the ongoing cases, DOJ has argued that the prohibition on gun ownership by marijuana users is also supported by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, U.S. v. Rahimi, that upheld the government’s ability to limit the Second Amendment rights of people with domestic violence restraining orders.
DOJ has made such arguments, for example, in favor of the firearms ban in a case in a case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit. In that matter, a group of Florida medical cannabis patients contends that their Second Amendment rights are being violated because they cannot lawfully buy firearms so long as they are using cannabis as medicine, despite acting in compliance with state law.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) under President Joe Biden consistently argued that medical marijuana patients who possess firearms “endanger public safety,” “pose a greater risk of suicide” and are more likely to commit crimes “to fund their drug habit.”
It remains unclear how the Trump administration will approach the cases. At a NRA conference in 2023, Trump suggested there might be a link between the use of “genetically engineered” marijuana and mass shootings. He listed a number of controversial and unproven factors that he said at the time he would direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to investigate as possibly causing the ongoing scourge of mass shooting afflicting the country.
“We have to look at whether common psychiatric drugs, as well as genetically engineered cannabis and other narcotics, are causing psychotic breaks” that lead to gun violence, he said.
DOJ has claimed in multiple federal cases over the past several years that the statute banning cannabis consumers from owning or possessing guns is constitutional because it’s consistent with the nation’s history of disarming “dangerous” individuals.
In 2023, for example, the Justice Department told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that historical precedent “comfortably” supports the restriction. Cannabis consumers with guns pose a unique danger to society, the Biden administration claimed, in part because they’re “unlikely” to store their weapon properly.
Last year, Biden’s son Hunter was convicted by a federal jury of violating statute by buying and possessing a gun while an active user of crack cocaine. Two Republican congressmen challenged the basis of that conviction, with one pointing out that there are “millions of marijuana users” who own guns but should not be prosecuted.
Meanwhile, some states have passed their own laws either further restricting or attempting to preserve gun rights as they relate to marijuana. Recently, for example, a Pennsylvania lawmaker introduced a bill meant to remove state barriers to medical marijuana patients carrying firearms.
Colorado activists also attempted to qualify an initiative for November’s ballot that would have protected the Second Amendment rights of marijuana consumers in that state, but the campaign’s signature-gathering drive ultimately fell short.
As 2024 drew to a close, the ATF issued a warning to Kentucky residents that, if they choose to participate in the state’s medical marijuana program that’s set to launch imminently, they will be prohibited from buying or possessing firearms under federal law.
The official said that while people who already own firearms aren’t “expected to” turn them over if they become state-legal cannabis patients, those who “wish to follow federal law and not be in violation of it” must “make the decision to divest themselves of those firearms.”
Since then, bipartisan state lawmakers have introduced legislation that would urge Kentucky’s representatives in Congress to amend federal law to clarify that users of medical marijuana may legally possess firearms.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) said last month that he supports the legislature’s effort to urge the state’s congressional delegation to call for federal reforms to protect the Second Amendment rights of medical marijuana patients, but the governor added that he’d like to see even more sweeping change on the federal level.
“I think the right way to deal with that is not just to focus on that issue, but to change the schedule of marijuana,” Beshear said at a press conference. “What we need to change is the overall marijuana policy by the federal government.”
Trump’s White House Budget Director Says Marijuana Is A ‘Gateway Drug’ And Pushed To Roll Back State Legalization
The post Federal Appeals Court Says Constitution Doesn’t Support Taking Guns Away From All Marijuana Users Categorically appeared first on Marijuana Moment.
No comments so far.
Be first to leave comment below.