The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) lobbying arm says that recent court decisions calling into question the constitutionality of the federal government’s ban on gun ownership by marijuana consumers has “led to a confusing regulatory landscape” that’s 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,” says 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.”
While nearly half of all states have legalized cannabis for adults—and even more allow medical marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation—the new blog post from the NRA Institute for Legislative Action notes that federal law continues to prohibit cultivation and possession of both marijuana and cannabis paraphernalia.
“This has led to a confusing regulatory landscape,” the group said.
On one hand, for example, NRA says the Biden administration “has taken a hands-off approach to enforcing federal laws in the context of marijuana commerce or use that is lawful in the jurisdiction in which it occurs.”
On the other, it notes that since President Barack Obama’s administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has “remained contradictorily committed to enforcing 922(g)(3) against marijuana users, even those complying with the laws of their states.”
The federal criminal statute prevents someone who is an “unlawful user” of an illegal drug from buying or possessing firearms. In recent years, however, it’s come under fire in federal courts.
Last week, for example, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that the firearms ban was unconstitutional in the case of at least one defendant, Patrick Daniels (U.S. v. Daniels). That ruling came on the heels of a string of other judicial decisions casting doubt on the legality of the ban.
While the cannabis and gun rights issue has played out in numerous courts over recent years—with several similarly finding the existing ban unconstitutional—the Fifth Circuit made a point to note that its ruling “is not a windfall for defendants charged under § 922(g)(3), present company included.”
NRA says in its new post that the legal uncertainty around marijuana and firearms is a problem.
“Whatever position one takes on the use of marijuana, Americans deserve laws that are clear, that are consistently and fairly applied, and that comply with the U.S. Constitution, as it was understood when it was adopted and amended in relevant respects,” the group wrote. “As the Daniels case indicates, the country is still struggling to reach that standard when it comes to marijuana use and firearms.”
As the state-level legalization movement has continued to expand despite a lack of meaningful reform at the federal level, the gun issue has become a major policy consideration within judicial and legislative circles.
A federal judge in El Paso, for example, 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.
Separately, a 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 Biden administration, meanwhile, has 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.”
The Justice Department 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, President Joe 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, however, 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.
As for NRA, the organization’s former president, David Keene, similarly said in 2018 that the federal law was causing “real problems.”
“The refusal of the federal government to accede to the judgment of the states on the issue has created problems for tens or even hundreds of thousands of gun owners who are being forced to either trade their Second Amendment rights for a chance to live pain-free or risk prosecution and imprisonment,” Keene, who was NRA’s president until 2013, wrote in an op-ed at the time.
Separately, at a NRA conference in 2023, President-elect Donald Trump suggesting there might be a link between the use of “genetically engineered” marijuana and mass shootings.
Trump 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.
The National Rifle Association’s (NRA) lobbying arm says that recent court decisions calling into question the constitutionality of the federal government’s ban on gun ownership by marijuana consumers has “led to a confusing regulatory landscape” that’s impacted Americans’ Second Amendment rights. “Marijuana use is no longer limited to the domain of indigenous religious customs or Read More
