A Feb. 3 decision in an Oklahoma federal court affirms that the Second Amendment right to possess firearms may not broadly be restricted.
Even those of us who strongly support laws against marijuana use should recognize that mere marijuana possession and small-batch use should not negate a fundamental constitutional right to own a gun that is in no way connected to the alleged cannabis infraction.At issue here is the nature of a fundamental constitutional right. It is true that even rights of such exalted status can be restricted for carefully targeted reasons that are well-rooted in the nation’s history and legal traditions.
Occasionally, prosecutors seize on this law, especially as part of tactics to pressure defendants accused of other laws as well, to indict people whose mere ownership of a gun has nothing to do with the alleged offense of using a controlled substance.
In the case in Oklahoma federal district court, the judge ruled that 18 U.S.C. § 922 is unconstitutional as written, not just as applied in that case. There, a man on bail for an alleged violent offense was discovered to have both a loaded handgun and marijuana in his car, the former of which was otherwise legal and the latter of which he claimed was legal because he worked at a state-allowed medical marijuana dispensary. Clearly, the man was no angel.
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