While Joe Biden frequently calls for gun restrictions and bans on “assault weapons,” his son Hunter is poised to become the nation’s highest-profile advocate for the right to bear arms while on crack.
As Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss wraps up his investigation into Hunter Biden’s business affairs, federal prosecutors are reportedly considering only four charges: two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion and a potential felony count on falsifying a form linked to a gun permit.
Hunter clearly lied on a form as part of a transaction for a handgun he purchased on Oct. 12, 2018, when he answered “no” to the question, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” Biden at the time was a frequent crack cocaine user, writing in his memoir that he “was smoking crack every 15 minutes.”
Federal laws prohibit active drug users from owning guns. The Biden regime has even defended a law that prohibits medical marijuana users from purchasing guns.
Hunter’s lawyers intend to fight back though.
A source told Politico that the lawyers told Justice Department officials they intend to challenge the constitutionality of the law under the Second Amendment as defense if he is charged.
The Gun Control Act of 1968 prohibits unlawful drug users from possessing firearms. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms says this ban applies to people who have admitted to using illegal drugs in the 12 months before buying a gun. Violators can receive up to 15 years in prison.
But the provision, long considered an unassailable gun restriction, now faces challenges. Last June, the Supreme Court undid decades of lower-court jurisprudence about the Second Amendment. In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the court’s six-justice conservative majority ruled that contemporary gun restrictions must be consistent with those of the founding era.
This new constitutional test presents a massive opening for people working to loosen gun restrictions, since firearm laws in America’s founding era were, in some ways, extremely permissive.
Joe Biden called the Bruen ruling deeply troubling and said it “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution.”
His son’s case is one of several cases nationwide now challenging the law banning drug users from owning guns, Politico reported.
Just a week after Bruen was released, a federal district judge in Utah ruled that the prohibition on drug users owning guns was unconstitutional because of its vagueness. Judge Jill Parrish noted that the statute itself doesn’t define the word “user” and also doesn’t say how the timing of people’s drug use affects their right to own guns. Parrish’s ruling — which the government has appealed — was based on the Fifth Amendment, not the Second, so it did not cite the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision. But Bruen only strengthens challenges to the drug-user prohibition.
Just ask Judge Patrick Wyrick, a district judge in Oklahoma who ruled in February that the government could not use the statute to prosecute a defendant who was caught with a gun and had marijuana in his car. In an opinion that relied heavily on Bruen, Wyrick wrote that barring marijuana users from possessing guns “is inconsistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” He rejected the government’s attempts to defend the statute’s constitutionality, including the government’s citations to 19th century laws that restricted people from using firearms while drunk.
And in Texas in April, a district judge also ruled against the constitutionality of the law. That case involved charges against a woman who had both marijuana and psilocybin — a psychedelic — in her home. Judge Kathleen Cardone concluded that the ban was inconsistent with the Second Amendment and with America’s early history of gun regulation. The Justice Department has appealed the Oklahoma and Texas cases.
Most courts, however, have continued to uphold the law banning drug users from owning guns, according to Jeff Welty, a professor at the School of Government at the University of North Carolina who closely tracks gun cases.
Given the conflicting rulings, it is likely the statute’s constitutionality will eventually wind up being settled in the Supreme Court, and according to law experts, “it’s not obvious how the court’s conservative majority will view the issue.”