An Oklahoma federal judge has determined that the federal statute that makes it illegal for persons who consume marijuana to also possess firearms is unconstitutional. After the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court established new rules for assessing the nation’s gun laws, a federal court in Oklahoma has concluded that a federal law preventing persons who use marijuana from having firearms is unconstitutional.
The lawyers representing Jared Michael Harrison claimed that the federal law prohibiting handgun possession by “unlawful users or addicts of controlled substances” violated their client’s Second Amendment right to carry arms. At the time of his arrest in May 2022, Harrison had been pulled up for a traffic violation in Lawton, Oklahoma.
When the police searched his car, they discovered a loaded pistol and a quantity of marijuana. Harrison told the police he was headed to a medical marijuana clinic for business, but he was caught because he did not have a valid medical marijuana card from his state.
His legal team had echoed the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen from earlier this year, arguing that the section of federal weapons legislation that targeted drug users or addicts was inconsistent with the nation’s long record of firearm regulation.
New precedents were established in that case regarding how the Second Amendment should be interpreted. Federal prosecutors had contended that the drug prohibition provision of the legislation is “compatible with a longstanding historical tradition in America of disarming presumptively hazardous persons, namely, convicts, the mentally ill, and the drunk.”
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick in Oklahoma City sided with Harrison’s attorneys and ruled that federal prosecutors’ claims 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.”
Wyrick, who was appointed by former President Trump, argued that “the simple use of marijuana has none of the features that the Nation’s history and tradition of gun control support.” Wyrick pointed out in his decision that over 2,000 Oklahoma businesses are in compliance with the law and sell marijuana to adults.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Oklahoma, which was prosecuting the case, and Harrison’s attorneys did not respond quickly to emails requesting comment on Sunday. The decision came after a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans declared on Thursday that the government cannot prohibit those with domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns.
While making its judgment, the panel cited the Bruen decision. There are three judges on the panel, and two of them were appointed by Donald Trump. The Department of Justice has indicated that it intends to file for a new review of the appeals court’s ruling.
A federal court in Midland, Texas, decided in September that a firearms statute that prevents persons under felony prosecution from purchasing guns is unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge David Counts, also a Trump appointment, said in that instance that there was “little evidence” that the indictment-related ban “aligns with this Nation’s historical heritage.”
