Courts Are Now Paying Attention, Maybe

A federal law prohibiting marijuana users from possessing firearms is unconstitutional, a federal judge in Oklahoma has concluded, citing last year's U.S. Supreme Court ruling that significantly expanded gun rights.

U.S. District Judge Patrick Wyrick, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump in Oklahoma City, on Friday dismissed an indictment against a man charged in August with violating that ban, saying it infringed his right to bear arms under the U.S. Constitution's Second Amendment.

Wyrick said that while the government can protect the public from dangerous people possessing guns, it could not argue Jared Harrison's "mere status as a user of marijuana justifies stripping him of his fundamental right to possess a firearm."

Bravo.

Some years back, a federal judge became addicted to heroin. He pled out to a misdemeanor possession charge. The hammer that the prosecutors used is that they indicted him for being a durg user who possessed firearms, which is a ten-year rap. The judge had been a bird-hunter, he had two shotguns which were in his gun safe at his house. There was never any allegation whatsoever that the guns played any part in his drug use, but they charged him with it.

I felt conflicted about that one. The charge was bullshit and yet again more evidence of the crushing power of prosecutors to charge people with irrelevant felonies. On the other hand, he was a fucking judge and should have known better.

I have mixed feelings about the recent case before the 5th Circuit on firearms possession and restraining orders. There are cases where removal is warranted. There are also cases where, especialy in scorched-earth cases, one party has used restraining orders to harass the other party. I don't know what the answer is, there. I do believe that restraining orders are made of paper and will not deter somoneone who truly seeks to harm the other party. But they do give the cops grounds to arrest the offending party, if the cops take it seriously. Which often, they don't.