Two defendants in Rhode Island who had challenged the law in court were found to be in violation of constitutional rights by a federal judge.
David Worster (left) and Alexzandria Carl, both defendants were accused of illegally owning firearms as regular marijuana consumers. Worster also faced charges of unlawfully possessing a weapon while being a felon. Carl was charged for lying on her gun application form about drug usage.
Both claimed that Second Amendment rights to gun ownership should mean the charges be dismissed.
Judge John J. McConnell Jr. was largely in agreement.
McConnell threw out the marijuana-related charges brought against the two defendants in an earlier decision. Worster, however, was still charged as a felon.
McConnell cites recent court rulings from the federal appellate courts to argue that there is no historical precedent for the prohibition on gun ownership of marijuana users.
“The Court struggles to see an on-point historical analogue,” the ruling says, quoting a U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit opinion saying that “the government offers no Founding-era law or practice of disarming ordinary citizens ‘even if their intoxication was routine.'”
A federal statute, § 922(g)(3), bars people from purchasing or possessing firearms if they’re an unlawful user of a controlled substance. Over the past few years, federal courts have begun to limit this law. They’ve decided, for instance, that an occasional use of drugs doesn’t warrant a ban on gun possession.
The courts have decided that it is constitutional to ban gun ownership categorically, even though a drug-user may be disarmed by law if they are intoxicated.
In the current case, “all the government alleged was that Mr. Worster had a medical marijuana card in his name, ‘a small marijuana grow with two mature marijuana plants, and a small back of dried marijuana’ at the time of the search,” McConnell’s ruling says. This tells the Court very little about Worster’s drug use and most importantly, for constitutional analysis, it does not suggest that he was drunk at the time of his arrest.
The decision states that in the case of Carl the defendant, denying her the right to own a firearm “based on habitual drug use or occasionally” “imposes far more burdens on her Second Amendment Rights than our tradition and history of firearms regulations can support.”
The decision notes “a growing Circuit consensus that the Second Amendment still protects those charged under § 922(g),” pointing to appellate opinions out of the U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeal of the Fifth, Third and Sixth circuits.
While other district courts within the First Circuit, which includes Rhode Island, have ruled differently, McConnell acknowledged, “that approach cannot be squared with the clear constitutional text, recent Supreme Court precedent, and persuasive—and increasingly pervasive—Circuit reasoning.”
McConnell, in his recent decision, wrote that Carl was not charged with making false claims about her drug usage on federal firearms applications. The government also failed to prove that this test is constitutional.
McConnell rejected the separate Second Amendment argument against the prohibition on felons possessing firearms, even though he threw out the marijuana-related charges. This prohibition is based more on public safety and historical precedent, McConnell said.
While he acknowledged the existence of First Circuit precedent saying that the law might be challenged as applied if “the underlying felony is ‘so tame and technical as to be insufficient to justify the ban,'” the judge ruled that “Worster’s criminal history, however, falls outside the scope of that exception.”
The judge noted that Worster’s record includes “multiple drug-related crimes, multiple firearm-related crimes, and two counts of possessing an explosive device”—activities the court called “far from ‘tame and technical.'”
It is a case. U.S.Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly was the first to report this.
The ruling, dated February 5, comes as more federal courts question the legality of § 922(g)(3). A panel of the Eighth Circuit dismissed, also earlier this month, a 3-year sentence against someone convicted of possession of a weapon while using marijuana.
Judges in that case ruled that government’s prohibition on gun ownership by drug users is justified only in certain circumstances—not always.
Nowhere in our history does it say that we can disarm ourselves simply by saying so [the defendant] The ruling stated that “belongs to the category of drug-users, which Congress has categorically classified as dangerous.”
A Fifth Circuit panel decided in another case, earlier this year that the ban on firearms was unconstitutional when applied to at least one defendant. That ruling came on the heels of a string of other judicial decisions casting doubt on the legality of the ban.
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. This court permitted the defendant to withdraw his guilty plea and dismissed the charges.
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.
In that case, the majority of discussion in the oral arguments was focused on whether there were any underlying disputes regarding the application or the face of the gun ban. In this case, like in others, judges focused their attention on whether or no the defendant was under the influence while in possession a gun.
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.This decision upheld that government has the right to restrict the Second Amendment Rights of those with domestic violence restraint 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. A group of Florida medical marijuana patients argues that they have been denied their Second Amendment right because they can’t legally buy firearms while using cannabis for medicine.
The DOJ, under the leadership of President Joe Biden has consistently maintained that marijuana patients possessing firearms endanger public security and pose a higher risk for suicide. They are also more likely to commit criminal acts “to support their drug addiction.”
Uncertainty remains about how Trump’s administration will deal with 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. Trump listed several controversial and unproven causes of the mass shootings that plague the United States. He said he’d direct the Food and Drug Administration to look into them.
We need to investigate whether psychotic break-outs are caused by psychiatric medications, genetically engineered marijuana, and other drugs.
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.
For example, by 2023 the Justice Department will have told the U.S. Court of Appeals of Third Circuit the historical precedent “comfortably supports” this 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.
Hunter Biden was convicted last year by a federal court of committing a felony by possessing and buying a gun when he used 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.
This situation has created confusion for medical marijuana patients as well as state legislators and advocacy groups. 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.
The advocacy group said that marijuana use was no longer restricted to youth counterculture or indigenous religious practices. It now included a variety of people using it as a recreational or medicinal drug. Many of these people are law-abiding, productive and responsible members of the community who want to exercise their rights to bear and keep arms.
Some states, however, have passed laws that either restrict gun rights or attempt to protect them in relation 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.
Officials said people with firearms who become cannabis patients in states that allow it are not “expected” to turn those guns over, but those who want to “follow federal law” and “not be in violation” of the law must “decide to divest” themselves of their 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.
Beshear told a press briefing that the best way to handle this issue was not to just focus on it, but change the marijuana schedule. We need to alter the marijuana policies of the federal government.
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