Federal appeals court strikes down law prohibiting users of illegal drugs from possessing firearms

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://news.yahoo.com/federal-appeals-court-strikes-down-224938624.html

A federal appeals court on Wednesday struck down a decades-old law barring
users of illegal drugs from possessing firearms – the latest blow to US
gun regulations after the Supreme Court cleared the way last year for
courts to reexamine the nation’s gun laws under a new legal standard.

In a unanimous judgement from a three-judge panel at the New Orleans-based
appeals court, the court said the 1968 law is unconstitutional, citing a
landmark 2022 Supreme Court decision that changes the framework that lower
courts must use when analyzing gun restrictions.

“In short, our history and tradition may support some limits on an
intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify
disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage,”
Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, a Ronald Reagan appointee, wrote for the panel.
“Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support
this restriction on nonviolent drug users.”

The ruling means that the man who brought the challenge to the regulation,
Patrick Daniels, will have his July 2022 conviction under the law thrown
out. Daniels had been sentenced to nearly four years in prison and three
years of probation.

“As applied to Daniels, then, (the federal gun law) violates the Second
Amendment,” Smith wrote.

Daniels had been arrested in April 2022 after law enforcement officers
searched his car during a stop and found marijuana butts and two loaded
firearms. The officers did not administer a drug test the night of the
stop, but Daniels admitted that he was a frequent user of marijuana.

The judgment also means that other defendants convicted under the law
within the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals’ jurisdiction could seek to
challenge their convictions under the new ruling. The circuit covers
Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi.

The statute examined by the 5th Circuit was one of the laws that federal
prosecutors alleged Hunter Biden violated with a gun purchase in 2018. The
Justice Department made the allegation as part of a proposed deal with the
president’s son that also covered certain alleged tax crimes, but the
agreement is now being scrutinized by a federal judge in Delaware. Biden
has pleaded not guilty.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the ruling.

This story has been updated with additional details.

CNN’s Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.

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