you are right where you need to be
I am someone who has owned firearms their entire adult life and has smoked marijuana recreationally for as long as it has been legal. I have personally had experience with these 2 interests interfering with each other and I know many people who have had to make decisions on one hobby because of the other. I have worked in the trades for a significant portion of my life and in that type of work environment there are many people who have a real need for pain relief due to a life of hard work. There are also a lot of gun owners in that sector due to the prominence of what many people would call “rednecks”. I had a coworker at my last job that said he wasn’t worried about whether it was legal or not to carry a gun while possessing a medical marijuana card because he said he would just lie. This can be dangerous if the people getting these cards are not informed of the possible consequences if they break the law(Mooney).
There are many people in the US that are users of medical or recreational marijuana and an even larger number of legal gun owners. The number of legal marijuana users has increased due to the growing trend of statewide legalization and decriminalization of marijuana(Small). Access to marijuana has also increased due to the availability of marijuana as a pharmaceutical option in today's world. With that being said this issue of the legality of owning a firearm while being prescribed a medicine is of great importance when the topic is not widely discussed. My connection to this issue is that I like to know the legality of hobbies I enjoy. Specifically, I research anything that I do that could get me into legal trouble in the future, such as incorrectly possessing or storing a firearm, or exceeding legal limits when it comes to possession of marijuana.
There are many people in the US that are prescribed medical marijuana by their doctors for a wide range of issues. This use of marijuana on a state-by-state basis has led to more discussion on the federal government's views on these new happenings (Gun Ownership). Many people have questions about how their medical card translates across state lines and other questions of the sort. One such issue is the legality of owning a gun while also being a legal consumer of marijuana in the eyes of the state(Gun Ownership). This issue comes due to the fact that any person who has filed a background check to buy a gun will know that there is a question on the form that asks the purchaser of the firearm if they are addicted to or are an unlawful user of marijuana or other Schedule 1 substance(Sherrill). The grey area is in the term “unlawful user” because in the eyes of a legal state, what a marijuana user is doing is legal, however, in the eyes of the federal government they are an unlawful user of a Schedule 1 substance.
My personal reason for looking into the legality of smoking marijuana and owning guns is that I was in a position where I was randomly drug tested for my job, which wasn’t an issue because I hadn’t smoked marijuana in a while. However, this particular company had a policy where you would not be reprimanded for smoking if you had a medical card. This led me to doing research on the topic because I knew I would qualify for the card, however I discovered an open letter written by the ATF that said you were committing a felony by smoking cannabis and owning or carrying firearms. In general people look into this issue and become passionate about this issue because it impacts their real life and the choices they are able to make. People talk about this issue back and forth mainly as an issue of the interaction between state and federal rights to make and enforce laws. There is also an element of a grey area being present due to how constantly new laws and regulations are being released. If this issue is ignored by lawmakers it will continue to leave room for interpretation by people who just want to follow the law.
The events that led me to be involved in this issue are when I worked at a job that allowed employees to waive results on a drug test with the use of a medical marijuana card made me want to research if I qualified for one. While I was researching this topic I thought immediately about whether my smoking would prevent me from being able to purchase a gun I wanted. I then called the store I buy guns from to see if someone who has a medical marijuana card could buy a gun through them legally, to which they replied that guns go through federal channels and therefor follow federal law. In federal law, there is no such thing as medical marijuana and in turn any user of marijuana is automatically disqualified from owning a gun. The timeline surrounding this goes as far back as the fight to legalize marijuana. The first official statement regarding this issue coming from the federal government is in 2011 where the ATF addressed statewide legalization of medical and recreational marijuana via an open letter to the public. In this letter they said that “it is unlawful to transfer a firearm to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that the person is an unlawful user of a controlled substance”(Sherrill).
This issue was mostly discussed at my job as a welder due to the number of employees that had medical marijuana cards, as well as owning guns. This level of exposure to people who were unknowingly breaking the law made me more concerned about the issue. I don’t think that the high number of people who own guns and consume cannabis products is not isolated to my last workplace. I think that this is probably commonplace in many workplaces spanning many industries. I think that this is an issue that is specific to the US, however, I think that it spans a majority of the US due to the fact that over half of the states in the US have legalized marijuana in some way(Small). As far as guns go there is legal firearm ownership given to every US citizen via the 2nd Amendment. This means that in over half of the country, there is a clash of federal and state laws that many of the participants of are not aware is even happening.
Works Cited
“Gun Ownership for MMJ Patients in Virginia?” Virginia Cannabis Information Portal, CaliforniaCannabis.org, virginiastatecannabis.org/mmj-gun-ownership. Accessed 11 Sept. 2024.
Mooney, Alex. “There Are Two Sides of the Fence, Use Marijuana and Give up Gun Ownership or Give up Marijuana and Be a Gun Owner.” Mooney House, Alex Mooney, 30 June 2024, mooney.house.gov/there-are-two-sides-of-the-fence-use-marijuana-and-give-up-gun-ownership-or-give-up-marijuana-and-be-a-gun-owner/.
Sherrill, Ashlee. “ATF Press Release.” ATF, 30 May 2023, www.atf.gov/news/press-releases/atf-provides-clarification-related-new-minnesota-marijuana-law.
Small, Craig. “The Intersection between Marijuana and the 2nd Amendment: What Gun Owners Need to Know: News & Events: Clark Hill PLC.” Clark Hill, Clark Hill PLC, 17 Apr. 2023, www.clarkhill.com/news-events/news/the-intersection-between-marijuana-and-the-2nd-amendment-what-gun-owners-need-to-know/.