Just when we thought we got a win out of the courts for the relationship between guns and marijuana, the DOJ is swooping in to try and effect the outcome.
Earlier this week, we reported that a Federal Appeals Court had ruled the ban of owning guns for weed smokers to be unconstitutional. In came from a specific case of a man who was arrested with guns and marijuana, but wasn’t high at the time.
Now, the Justice Department has spread word that it believes the ruling was “incorrectly decided.”
It sent this letter to the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, who is determining the constitutionality of a separate case dealing with guns and marijuana. The DOJ hopes to lean the court’s decision towards upholding their stance.
“In deviating from those precedents, Daniels relied on the Fifth Circuit’s prior decision in United States v. Rahimi, a case in which the Supreme Court recently granted the government’s petition for a writ of certiorari. For the reasons given in the government’s brief in this case, Daniels is incorrectly decided and § 922(g)(3) accords with the Second Amendment,” said the Justice Department in their memo.
In the Eleventh Circuit case, the court is focusing on whether medical cannabis patients are able to own guns.
Whether or not the Eleventh Circuit also decides the barring to be unconstitutional, it seems this issue is bound to head all the way up to the Supreme Court for a final decision. Hopefully this will happen some time this year.
