The States With a Double Standard on Marijuana Use and Guns

Not everyone agrees on whether or not marijuana use should be legalized to any degree. That’s fine because that’s not what we’re here to talk about. This is Bearing Arms, not Bearing Blunts. 

But there is an intersection of marijuana and the Second Amendment, namely that people can comply with state laws, but still be in violation of federal laws because they use marijuana. Now, federal law supersedes state law, which we all know, but the feds aren’t exactly busting down doors of dispensaries to arrest the owners. No one in authority cares about the pot.

The problem is that if you own a gun and are using this substance that clearly, no level of government has a problem with, you’re committing a felony.

That’s screwed up, but not as much as the states that have legalized marijuana now trying to say marijuana use makes people too dangerous to own a gun.

If you are a cannabis consumer who owns a gun, you are committing a federal felony right now, even if you live in one of the 40 states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use. That perplexing situation is perfectly reasonable and constitutional, according to 19 of those states, which are urging the Supreme Court to uphold the federal ban on gun possession by “unlawful” users of “any controlled substance.”

That law is at the center of a case that the Court is scheduled to hear on March 2, which involves a Texas man, Ali Hemani, who was charged with illegal gun possession after an FBI search of his home discovered a Glock 19 pistol, two ounces of marijuana, and less than a gram of cocaine. The potential implications extend far beyond Hemani because this ban applies to millions of peaceful Americans who pose no plausible threat to public safety.

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Illinois and a bunch of other states that allow recreational use of marijuana complain that the 5th Circuit’s understanding of the Second Amendment constrains their ability to impose restrictions aimed at “preventing firearms from coming into the hands of people likely to misuse them.” Those people, they imply, include everyone who buys and consumes marijuana in compliance with state law.

That position is puzzling, since all these states have decided that marijuana should be treated like alcohol. If drinkers are not categorically forbidden to possess firearms, why should cannabis consumers be disarmed simply because they use a different intoxicant?

In their attempt to justify that arbitrary distinction, Illinois et al. warn that drug users may suffer “lasting mental disturbances,” commit crimes to support their habits, or “interact with” violent “drug dealers and traffickers.” Those concerns make little sense as applied to the typical cannabis consumer, especially when he is buying marijuana from state-licensed stores.

To me, this smacks of weapons-grade hypocrisy.

They’ll legalize marijuana in their state, some of which don’t even ask for a prescription, and then act like the substance they legalized is so absolutely dangerous that it warps the mind beyond repair and makes the users unfit for society in general.

Uh…then why did you legalize it?

I tend to have a very libertarian view on the topic, like many others. If people want to cause damage to themselves, have at it, just so long as you don’t hurt someone else.

But here, the issue is that these states have elevated something not expressly protected in the Constitution to a position higher than the expressly protected right to keep and bear arms.

It’s insane.

What’s more, as Reason’s Jacob Sullum notes above, they’re treating every customer of licensed dispensaries as if they’re the same as the guy scoring fentanyl on the street corner. Those are very different things, and they know it.

They’re not arguing that users of other drugs should remain prohibited. They’re not trying to argue that only those with a prescription should be able to keep their Second Amendment rights. It’s none of that.

Instead, they see marijuana as something so tame that it can be sold out of businesses with special licenses from the state, but so dangerous that the very foundational liberties this country was founded on should be suspended.

If anyone can find the logic there, I’d love to hear it. And I mean actual logic, not “logic.”

You probably can’t, though, because it’s not really about the pot. It’s about keeping as many people disarmed as they can, no matter what.

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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