The Second Amendment may very well be the most important right provided to us in the Constitution, perhaps only for the fact that it is the provision that protects the remaining entirety of the document and the nation itself.
Without the right to bear arms, our nation could have long faded into abject authoritarianism, with the federal government putting the proverbial boot on our neck decades ago.
But this hasn’t stopped a great many liberals from attempting to neuter the right to bear arms, largely through a campaign meant to make owning a firearm a tedious, annoying, and expensive prospect.
One attempt to further infringe upon the Second Amendment sought to ban cannabis users from owning guns, but the judicial system has prevented such an overreach...so far.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Patrick R. Wyrick dismissed an indictment against Jared Michael Harrison, holding that the statute relied upon to ban gun ownership by marijuana users is “unconstitutionally vague, in violation of the Due Process Clause, and unconstitutionally infringes upon his fundamental right to possess a firearm, in violation of the Second Amendment.”
Harrison was indicated by a federal grand jury on August 17, 2022, for possessing a firearm while being an “unlawful user of marijuana,” with 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) being relied upon in the indictment.
The ruling was hard to misinterpret.
Wyrick weighed the indictment in light of the Supreme Court Bruen (2022) decision, as Harrison contended that he had a right to possess a firearm and that 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) “infringed on that right.”
Wyrick observed:
Section 922(g)(3) does not have deep roots; it wasn’t enacted by Congress until the Gun Control Act of 1968.The statute initially prohibited any individual who was “an unlawful user of or addicted to marihuana or any depressant or stimulant drug . . . or narcotic drug” from receiving a firearm,but it was amended in 1986 to broadly prohibit the receipt or possession of a firearm by any person who “is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)).”In its modern form, § 922(g)(3) thus strips a person of their fundamental right to possess a firearm the instant the person becomes an “unlawful user” of marijuana. And in the United States’ view, all users of marijuana are “unlawful users.”
In applying Bruen, Wyrick pointed out: “The question here is thus whether stripping someone of their right to possess a firearm solely because they use marijuana is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. If it is not, then § 922(g)(3) cannot be constitutionally applied to Harrison—no matter the reasonableness of the policy it embodies.”
Marijuana is going mainstream here in American, with more than half of the states in the union allowing residents to use marijuana in one form or another, whether that be recreationally or medicinally.
