Texas Judge Rules Pot User Still Has 2A Rights

In the ongoing battle over cannabis use and gun ownership, a Texas district judge recently ruled that smoking marijuana does not automatically negate a person’s Second Amendment-protected right to keep and bear arms.

One portion of the Gun Control Act of 1968 makes it illegal for anyone using marijuana or other banned narcotics to purchase or own a firearm. In fact, the form used by the National Instant Background Check (NICS) system specifically asks purchasers if they use marijuana or other illegal controlled substances. Courts have recently weighed in with rulings on both sides of the spectrum, some declaring the law unconstitutional with others upholding the law.

According to a recent report at thereload.com, on December 30, U.S. District Judge David Briones of the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas ruled in the case U.S. v. Gil that pot users are among “the people” mentioned in the Second Amendment and other amendments to the Bill of Rights.

Consequently, the judge dismissed a criminal indictment against an El Paso man caught with multiple bags of marijuana and firearms in his home. The judge determined that the government couldn’t prove the man was high at the time of his arrest, so his prosecution represented an unconstitutional application of the federal law that bans drug users from owning firearms.

“The coverage of the Second Amendment is broad at this stage of the analysis and the language of the Second Amendment is clear on this point,” Judge Briones wrote in the ruling. “The Bill of Rights uses the phrase ‘the people’ five times. In each place, it refers to all members of our political community, not a special group of upright citizens.”

According to court documents, officers arrested Adrian Gil in 2021 after being called to his house over a fight involving a firearm. There, they discovered at least two large vacuum-sealed bags of marijuana and multiple guns.

The arresting officers said Gil admitted to being a daily user of marijuana since the age of 14 and acknowledged that he knew marijuana users could not legally own firearms. He was subsequently indicted, pled guilty and was sentenced to 35 months in prison before he moved to appeal his charges on constitutional grounds.

Using the precedent set in the Bruen decision for determining Second Amendment cases, Judge Brionne first looked at whether the plain text of the amendment covered Gil’s conduct. It then analyzed the second Bruen standard—whether there is a historical tradition of such a law from the founding period.

Ultimately, the judge determined that Gil’s conduct was protected, and the government could not provide evidence of such a historical standard.

“While the Government goes to great lengths to disclose that Defendant ‘admitted being a daily user of marihuana since age 14′ and that Defendant ‘just like[d] good weed,’ it does nothing in the way of proving that Defendant was intoxicated by marijuana at the time of this incident, or at the time he was arrested,” Briones concluded. “In line with the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning in Connelly, this Court agrees that ‘based on habitual or occasional drug use, § 922(g)(3) imposes a far greater burden on [Defendant’s] Second Amendment rights than our history and tradition of firearms regulation can support.’”