Ban on marijuana users owning guns is unconstitutional, judge rules
A federal judge in Oklahoma has ruled that a federal law prohibiting people who use marijuana from owning firearms is unconstitutional, the latest challenge to firearms regulations after the conservative-dominated US supreme court set new standards for reviewing gun laws.
Lawyers for Jared Michael Harrison argued that their client’s second amendment right to bear arms was violated by a federal law that makes it illegal for “unlawful users or addicts of controlled substances” to possess firearms.
Harrison was charged after being arrested by police in Lawton, Oklahoma, in May 2022 following a traffic stop. During a search of his car, police found a loaded revolver and marijuana. Harrison told police he had been on his way to work at a medical marijuana dispensary but did not have a state-issued medical-marijuana card.
His lawyers argued the portion of federal firearms law focused on drug users or addicts was not consistent with the historical tradition of firearm regulation, echoing what the US supreme court ruled last year in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v Bruen that set new standards for interpreting the second amendment.
Federal prosecutors argued that the portion of the law focused on drug users is “consistent with a longstanding historical tradition in America of disarming presumptively risky persons, namely, felons, the mentally ill, and the intoxicated”.
A US district judge, Patrick Wyrick, agreed with Harrison’s lawyers, ruling on Friday that prosecutors’ arguments that Harrison’s status as a marijuana user “justifies stripping him of his fundamental right to possess a firearm … is not a constitutionally permissible means of disarming Harrison”.
“But the mere use of marijuana carries none of the characteristics that the nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation supports,” said Wyrick, who was appointed by Donald Trump.
Wyrick highlighted that under Oklahoma law, marijuana can be bought legally at more than 2,000 store fronts in the state.
Attorneys for Harrison, as well as the US attorney for the western district of Oklahoma, prosecuting the case, did not immediately comment.
The ruling came after a three-judge panel of the fifth US circuit court of appeals in New Orleans on Thursday ruled that the government cannot stop people who have domestic violence restraining orders from owning guns. The panel referenced the Bruen decision. Two of the three judges on that panel are Trump appointees.
The justice department has said it will seek further review of the appeals court’s decision.
In September, a federal judge in Midland, Texas, ruled that a firearms law that bans those under felony indictment from buying guns was unconstitutional. In that case, the US district judge David Counts, also a Trump appointee, also echoed supreme court language in the Bruen case, saying there was “little evidence” the ban related to being under indictment “aligns with this nation’s historical tradition”.