The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously limited the use of a gun law used to prosecute President Biden's son Hunter. The case, however, did not affect Biden, who was pardoned by his father.
The case was brought by a Ali Hemani, a Texas resident who admitted to FBI agents that he used pot several times a week at the same time that he owned a legally purchased gun. He was soon indicted under the federal Gun Control Act, which makes it a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison for an individual to use illegal drugs and to have even a legally purchased gun. While it is the same law used to prosecute Hunter Biden, the Supreme Court's decision was sufficiently narrow that it may not insulate from prosecution those who, like Biden, use more serious drugs, and own a gun.
In explaining the decision, Justice Neil Gorsuch stressed that the ruling was extremely limited, in part because marijuana use has become so ubiquitous, widely accepted and is now legal to one degree or another in 40 states. Indeed, as Gorsuch observed, the federal government itself has reclassified many marijuana products from a schedule one, high-potential-for-abuse category, down to a schedule 3 drug. Therefore, said Gorsuch, the only thing before the court is the government's "ambitious theory" that could "could automatically strip Mr. Hemani of his Second Amendment right to own a gun because he uses marijuana a few times week." The court's answer was basically, no you can't do that.
The decision was unanimous, though several justices filed concurring opinions.
So, was this a big win for gun rights advocates?
"It's a good question" said Stephen Stamboulieh, a lawyer for Gun Owners of America. "I think it's a pretty significant win when we have basically the entire court saying that a federal statute can't go as far as it tried to go.
Eric Ruben, a law professor at Southern Methodist University had a different take. "I think the outcome of this case was based on the view that most Americans may hold, which is that weed is the new booze.
The narrowness of Thursday's ruling, plus the fact that a total of five justices filed concurring opinions that spelled out different approaches, is a reflection of the many divisions among the justices on the subject of guns and gun regulations. In 2022 the court's conservative majority declared for the first time that in order for a gun law or gun regulation to be constitutional, it had to be analogous to laws at the nation's founding in the 1700s and early 1800s. Since then, however, lower court judges, and the Supreme Court itself, have struggled with how to apply such a rigid rule.
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