"John Adams took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. Thomas Jefferson said he wasn't much of user of alcohol. He only had three or four glasses of wine a night. Are they all habitual drunkards who would be properly disarmed for life under your theory?"
"Marijuana use is legal, to one degree or another, in 40 states, but at the same time it's illegal under federal law and is classified a schedule one drug, among the most dangerous. But on Monday, his Justice Department was in the Supreme Court seeking to uphold a law that makes it a crime punishable by up to 15 years in prison for a marijuana user to own a gun."
"Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson repeatedly pointed to Monday's case as an illustration of how difficult the 2022 Bruen decision is to apply."
The Supreme Court heard arguments on Monday regarding a federal law that criminalizes gun ownership for marijuana users, with penalties up to 15 years imprisonment. This case intersects with the 2022 Bruen decision, which requires gun laws to have historical analogues from the nation's founding. The Justice Department argued the law parallels historical restrictions on "habitual drunkards." Justice Gorsuch challenged this analogy, noting that Founding Fathers like John Adams and James Madison consumed substantial amounts of alcohol daily, questioning whether they would be disarmed under such logic. The case highlights tensions between state-level marijuana legalization and federal prohibition, while illustrating the practical difficulties in applying the Bruen framework to modern gun regulations.
Read at www.npr.org
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