The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans found the 1968 law barring illegal drug users from having firearms unconstitutional.
The appeals court only affects districts in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Therefore, don’t believe all the headlines that make you think this will directly help Hunter Biden.
But the ruling could set a precedent.
The Fifth Circuit struck down statute 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), which bars “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802).”
The Court cited the Supreme Court case U.S. v. Bruen. That case changed “the framework that lower courts must use when analyzing gun restrictions.”
Cops found marijuana and two loaded firearms when they searched Daniels’ car. Daniels was sentenced to four years and three years of probation.
The Court’s decision throws out Daniels’ sentence.
Hunter Biden has been charged under the same statute in Delaware. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third District has Delaware in its jurisdiction, so if it has a similar case and comes to the same ruling, it could affect Hunter.
It’s also possible the DOJ could use the 5th Circuit’s ruling to work out a new plea agreement.
“Even though Hunter Biden’s situation is readily distinguishable from that of Patrick Daniels, it’s possible the Justice Department could rationalize that the 5th Circuit’s ruling supports its exercise of discretion to give Biden deferred-prosecution treatment (as currently proposed, two years of probationary conditions followed by dismissal if the conditions are met) in a plea agreement,” former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy told Fox News.
I agree with the Court. There is a period at the end of the Second Amendment. The words “but,” “unless,” or “however” do not exist in the amendment.
“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,” wrote Judge Jerry Smith. “Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support this restriction on nonviolent drug users.”
It shocks me that courts have to explain the amendments, especially the Bill of Rights. Our Founders worded the document in a way that it shouldn’t confuse anyway and fit in with society no matter how it changes.
“Even as a marihuana user, Daniels is a member of our political community,” declared Smith. “Therefore, he has a presumptive right to bear arms. By infringing on that right, § 922(g)(3) contradicts the plain text of the Second Amendment.”
The Court also dismissed previous rulings because those “exist to ensure a competent military” because impaired men cannot properly perform their duties.
Smith wrote, “The government has failed to identify any relevant tradition at the Founding of disarming ordinary citizens who consume alcohol.”
The Court then dissected the words “unlawful user.” I’ve learned in my few months of law school that the meaning of words matters more in law than it does in any other concentration. I majored in English! This is interesting:
The statutory term “unlawful user” captures regular users of marihuana, but its temporal nexus is vague—it does not specify how recently an individual must “use” drugs to qualify for the prohibition. Daniels himself admitted to smoking marihuana fourteen days a month, but we do not know how much he used at those times, and the government presented no evidence that Daniels was intoxicated at the time he was found with a gun. Indeed, under the government’s reasoning, Congress could ban gun possession by anyone who has multiple alcoholic drinks a week from possessing guns based on the postbellum intoxicated carry laws. The analogical reasoning Bruen prescribed cannot stretch that far.
The times before the Second Amendment had restrictions on gun ownership, such as Loyalists and Catholics. (WHY do people hate Catholics so much?)
But does that matter? No.
Glorious (emphasis mine): “The predecessors of the Second Amendment gave concrete language to possible limits on the right to bear arms. Yet that language was not adopted. Instead, the People ratified the unqualified directive: ‘shall not be infringed.’ U.S. Const. amend. II. Usually, when the relevant lawmaking body does not adopt language in a draft, we presume that the stricken language was not intended.”
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