A federal judge in Oklahoma has ruled that a law prohibiting marijuana users from owning firearms is unconstitutional. The ruling comes following the Supreme Court conservative majority’s new standards reviewing gun law. The new standards have ignited legal battles across the country, one of these in which U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick in Oklahoma City knocked down a law that makes it illegal for “unlawful users or addicts of controlled substances” to possess firearms. In the case, Michael Harrison had been charged with violating this law but his lawyers “argued the portion of federal firearms law focused on drug users or addicts was not consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” However, prosecutors stated that the law is “consistent with a longstanding historical tradition in America of disarming presumptively risky persons, namely, felons, the mentally ill, and the intoxicated.”
Judge Wyrick ended up agreeing with Harrison’s lawyers, ruling that federal prosecutors’ arguments 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.”
“But the mere use of marijuana carries none of the characteristics that the Nation’s history and tradition of firearms regulation supports,” Wyrick said in his ruling.
Congress Pushes National Ban On High-Powered Guns
According to Fox:
The decision comes after the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that a federal law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders have a constitutional right to own firearms.
