Does this allow criminals to buy guns?
The US Dept. Of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Form 4473 (5300.9) Firearms Transaction Record;
Section B #21c. Have you ever been convicted in any court, including a military court, of a felony, or any other crime for which the judge could have imprisoned you for more than one year, even if you received a shorter sentence including probation?
Section B #21 e. “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance? Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”
These two questions are among those that an applicant to purchase a firearm must answer. So the Biden pardons raise some questions themselves.
“The Justice Department will expeditiously administer the President’s proclamation, which pardons individuals who engaged in simple possession of marijuana, restoring political, civil, and other rights to those convicted of that offense,” the department said in a statement. “In coming days, the Office of the Pardon Attorney will begin implementing a process to provide impacted individuals with certificates of pardon.”
The first obvious question is will these previously convicted criminals now have their right to buy, own and possess a firearm be restored? How should they answer these questions if they apply to buy a firearm?
Has our anti gun president just restored the rights of convicted criminals to go out and buy a gun? He is pushing the Federal Government and State Governors to change the status of marijuana as a controlled substance. We are not disagreeing with such a change but just wondering how will this be handled with the right to buy, own, and possess firearms? It seems a bit contradictory for such an anti gun administration to allow criminals to buy and own guns.
So far we have not heard any discussion of this dilemma in any national media. At some point it needs to be addressed. Stay tuned we will keep you posted on any developments.
More on Marijuana and guns from marijuanamoment.net from August 2022
The Department of Justice asked a federal court on Monday to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to overturn a policy blocking medical marijuana patients from buying or owning guns. The filling is partly premised on the government’s position that it would be too “dangerous to trust regular marijuana users to exercise sound judgment” with firearms.
In making its case for dismissal, DOJ also drew eyebrow-raising historical parallels to past gun bans for groups like Native Americans, Catholics, panhandlers, those who refuse to take an oath of allegiance to the government and people who shoot firearms while drunk.
The lawsuit at hand, which was filed by Florida’s Democratic agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried and several medical cannabis consumers, asserts that the federal government is unlawfully depriving patients of their constitutional rights on multiple grounds, and the plaintiffs filed a revised complaint last month following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on an unrelated gun rights case in New York.
As plaintiffs anticipated, DOJ submitted the motion to dismiss the case on Monday, the court-imposed deadline for a response. The government provided a justification for its dismissal request in an attached memorandum.
At a top level, the Justice Department said the gun rights are generally reserved for “law-abiding” people. Florida might have legalized medical cannabis, but the department said that doesn’t matter as long as it remains federally prohibited. It also said that, while two of the plaintiffs who were denied firearms after admitting on a federal form that they use medical marijuana might have standing for injury, it said neither the commissioner nor a separate defendant could say the same.
DOJ’s memo is also full of curious references to precedent and historic gun policies, in addition to dismissing the definition of medical marijuana altogether because the government upholds that cannabis “has no currently accepted medical use.”
read the whole article here
