Drug User Cannot Be Barred From Owning Guns, US Court Rules

(Reuters) – A federal appeals court docket on Wednesday dominated {that a} decades-old regulation prohibiting customers of unlawful medicine from proudly owning firearms was unconstitutional as utilized to the case of a marijuana consumer, the most recent fallout from a U.S. Supreme Court docket ruling final yr that expanded gun rights.

A 3-judge panel of the New Orleans-based fifth U.S. Circuit Court docket of Appeals concluded that the federal regulation violated a Mississippi man’s proper to “maintain and bear arms” beneath the U.S. Structure’s Second Modification.

The person, Patrick Daniels, had been convicted beneath that regulation after regulation enforcement discovered a pistol and a semi-automatic rifle in his car throughout a visitors cease together with marijuana cigarette butts.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration didn’t administer a drug check, although Daniels admitted he generally smoked marijuana, which federal regulation prohibits. He was sentenced to almost 4 years in jail.

Whereas his case was pending, the conservative-majority Supreme Court docket in June 2022 declared for the primary time that the Second Modification protects a person’s proper to hold a handgun in public for self-defense.

That call, New York State Rifle & Pistol Affiliation v. Bruen, additionally introduced a brand new check for assessing firearms legal guidelines, saying restrictions have to be “in step with this nation’s historic custom of firearm regulation.”

U.S. Circuit Choose Jerry Smith, an appointee of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, mentioned that call meant the statute was invalid as utilized to Daniels.

“In brief, our historical past and custom could help some limits on an intoxicated individual’s proper to hold a weapon, nevertheless it doesn’t justify disarming a sober citizen primarily based solely on his previous drug utilization,” he wrote.

U.S. Circuit Choose Stephen Higginson, an appointee of former Democratic President Barack Obama, in a concurring opinion agreed whereas noting that many different gun security legal guidelines had likewise been struck down because the Supreme Court docket’s ruling.

He urged the court docket to supply extra steerage in a case it agreed to listen to in its subsequent time period, saying final yr’s ruling may in any other case end result within the “dismantling of the legal guidelines which have served to guard our nation for generations.”

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Modifying by Shri Navaratnam)

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