Good to see the NRA spinning a bit, gone are the days that all cannabis users are anti-American layabouts..reality bites hard sometimes!
Marijuana Moment
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.
