In defending this law, the government will likely argue that unlawful drug users are categorically more dangerous with access to firearms than ordinary citizens. Maybe. But it seems like it could be an uphill battle for the government to show that Patrick Daniels’ regular marijuana ingestion makes him appreciably more dangerous than a person who drinks liquor a comparable amount (alcohol is excluded from the list of controlled substances under federal law, and there is no alcohol-based gun prohibition in federal law, so the chronic drinker can keep his gun while the smoker of chronic faces 15 years in prison; this despite the empirical evidence showing the toxic combination of guns and alcohol).
In defending this law, the government will likely argue that unlawful drug users are categorically more dangerous with access to firearms than ordinary citizens. Maybe. But it seems like it could be an uphill battle for the government to show that Patrick Daniels’ regular marijuana ingestion makes him appreciably more dangerous than a person who drinks liquor a comparable amount (alcohol is excluded from the list of controlled substances under federal law, and there is no alcohol-based gun prohibition in federal law, so the chronic drinker can keep his gun while the smoker of chronic faces 15 years in prison; this despite the empirical evidence showing the toxic combination of guns and alcohol).
