Supreme Court Likely to Deliver For Pot-Smoking Gun Owners

Marijuana isn’t a wonder drug, no matter what proponents try to claim. It can solve some issues, but it can also create some. It’s a dangerous substance that should be approached with caution, not unlike alcohol or tobacco.

Those latter two, though, are legal everywhere in the country. Marijuana, though, is still technically illegal at the federal level, even if the DEA looks the other way on it in literally every state that has some form of legalization on the books. That’s fine, I suppose, but the issue with this is that because it’s still legal at the federal level, there’s a massive inconsistency between drug enforcement and gun law enforcement.

Namely, someone who uses marijuana in accordance with state law, even with a prescription, is technically prohibited from owning guns. 

My biggest issue here has always been the consistency. If you’re going to say pot users are dangerous, then enforce the federal ban. If they’re not, then stop enforcing the firearm ban.

Still, the DOJ defended the law during oral arguments in U.S. v Hemani several weeks ago. It just looks a lot like the Supreme Court was unmoved.

The bench was not buying it.

Justice Neil Gorsuch went after the historical logic directly: “Are they all habitual drunkards who would be properly disarmed for life under your theory?” The Founders were regular drinkers, Gorsuch noted. John Adams. James Madison. Under the government’s theory, half the Constitutional Convention was disqualified.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett drilled into how broadly the statute reaches. It would cover someone who takes a spouse’s Ambien without a prescription. She asked whether “it is obvious that a risk of violence would ensue” from that kind of use. The government didn’t have a clean answer.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was blunter: “Your argument sort of falls apart under the Bruen test.”

That might be the last intelligent thing I heard from Justice Jackson for quite some time, based on some of the other arguments we’ve seen from her.

Still, in this case, she’s right, and while it’s likely that Thomas, Alito, and Roberts come down on what I consider to be the wrong side of this, Gorsuch and Barrett will likely side with the liberal justices on a gun rights case that, for once, works out in the Second Amendment’s favor.

Don’t get me wrong, Brown, Sotomayor, and Kagan aren’t taking a pro-gun position, but a pro-pot one here, assuming we’re reading the tea leaves correctly.

Gorsuch’s approach was a key one for me because the Founding Fathers were drinkers. They drank a lot. I think most of us have seen the famous bar tab from 1787, just 55 people at a going-away party for George Washington, who drank more than a fraternity filled with veterans with drinking problems could in a month. They put them down, and one would see that today and think someone has a major drinking problem.

Under the government’s position, all of them should have been disarmed. That’s right, George Washington should have been disarmed.

Honestly, I don’t think that pot is good for you, as a general thing. Like most things used as medicine, the poison is in the dose, and recreational users tend to consume more than those who are just trying to treat a particular condition. Generally, anyway.

But with that said, gun rights are gun rights, and you don’t take those away just because. If you’re not going to enforce drug laws regarding marijuana in any other way, you shouldn’t remotely be enforcing them when they deal with guns.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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