While most states recognize some form of legal recreational or medical marijuana use, it remains unlawful at the federal level and a specific bar to legal gun possession. The ATF’s current Form 4473, used on every over-the-counter gun transfer, even pointedly states that “The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside,” with a positive answer of being a user of the “reefer” reason enough to reject a transfer.
Enter Judge Patrick Wyrick, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma. Last week, Wyrick, a former state supreme court justice and Solicitor General of Oklahoma handed down a 54-page ruling holding the federal government’s feet to the fire on the intersection of marijuana and guns.
In the case of a man who was arrested after police found a loaded handgun and a pretty decent variety of marijuana in his car, then caught a weapons charge that made its way to Wyrick’s bench, the judge flatly informed prosecutors that, according to text and tradition of past gun laws, the federal ban on users of the drug not being able to possess a firearm violated the Second Amendment.
Expect to hear more about this in the coming weeks.
