Marijuana users have a constitutional right to own firearms, judge rules

A federal judge in Oklahoma ruled Friday that a law barring marijuana users from owning firearms is unconstitutional. 

The ruling is the latest challenge to firearms regulations after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority set new standards for reviewing the nation’s gun laws.

U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick in Oklahoma City dismissed an indictment against Jared Michael Harrison, who was charged in August with violating a federal law that makes it illegal for “unlawful users or addicts of controlled substances” to possess firearms.

Harrison’s lawyers had 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, echoing what the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. That case set new standards for interpreting the Second Amendment.

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Federal prosecutors, on the other hand, had argued that the portion of the law focused on drug users is “consistent with a longstanding historical tradition in America of disarming presumptively risky persons, namely, felons, the mentally ill, and the intoxicated.”

Wyrick agreed with Harrison’s lawyers, ruling on Friday 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.

The decision comes after the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday that a federal law barring people with domestic violence restraining orders have a constitutional right to own firearms.