Federal Appeals Court Rules That Gun Ban For Cannabis Consumers Is Unconstitutional

A federal appeals court has ruled that the ban preventing people who use marijuana from possessing firearms is unconstitutional. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that the historical context of the Second Amendment’s original 1791 ratification did not justify disarming individuals based on past drug usage.

The decision is the latest in a series of successful challenges to the long-standing federal prohibition, which is actively being contested in various court cases across the country.

A three-judge panel for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decided on Wednesday to toss the conviction of Patrick Daniels, a Mississippi man arrested and sentenced to prison for possessing firearms as an unlawful user of marijuana. The panel found that Daniels’ conviction was inconsistent with the “history and tradition” of gun regulation.

“In short, our history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage,” Judge Jerry E. Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote for the unanimous panel in US v. Daniels.

“Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support this restriction on nonviolent drug users. As applied to Daniels, then, § 922(g)(3) violates the Second Amendment.”

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Kimberly Golden Gore, an attorney for Daniels, similarly said during an oral argument in June that her client was “serving 46 months in a federal facility for having less than half a gram of marijuana, and two firearms that otherwise would have been legal,” arguing that “historical tradition simply doesn’t support that kind of permanent and total restriction on his Second Amendment rights.”

This ruling potentially invalidates the firearms ban for any person who is an “unlawful user” of any illicit drug, not just marijuana.