{"id":363400,"date":"2025-08-22T00:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T00:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/363400\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T00:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T00:38:09","slug":"guns-or-weed-justice-department-says-you-cant-use-both","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/363400\/","title":{"rendered":"Guns or weed? Justice Department says you can’t use both"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"play\"<\/p>\n

Supreme Court upholds requirements of serial numbers and background checks for ghost guns<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a Biden administration regulation on the nearly impossible-to-trace weapons called ghost guns, clearing the way for continued serial numbers, background checks and age verification requirements to buy them in kits online.<\/p>\n

Fox – 32 Chicago<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2013 The Trump administration\u2019s aggressive defense<\/a> of gun rights has at least one exception.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s lawyers want the Supreme Court <\/a>to make clear that regular pot smokers \u2013 and other drug users \u2212 shouldn\u2019t be allowed to own firearms.<\/p>\n

An appeals court has said a federal law making it a crime for drug users to have a gun can\u2019t be used against someone based solely on their past drug use.<\/p>\n

Limiting the law to blocking the use of guns while a person is high effectively guts the statute that reduces gun violence, the Justice Department told the Supreme Court. It’s asking the justices<\/a> to overturn the appeals court\u2019s decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Trump’s Justice Department has sided with gun owners in other cases<\/p>\n

The department\u2019s defense of the law is particularly notable as the Trump administration has sided with gun rights advocates in other cases \u2013 including one in which it declined to appeal a lower court’s ruling against a federal law setting 21 as the minimum age to own a handgun.<\/p>\n

More: <\/strong>Trump DOJ wants Supreme Court to bring down hammer on gun rules<\/a><\/p>\n

But on the issue of drug use, the government is appealing four cases to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to focus on one involving a dual citizen of the United States and Pakistan who was charged with unlawfully owning a Glock pistol because he regularly smoked marijuana.<\/p>\n

The FBI had been monitoring Ali Danial Hemani because of his alleged connection to Iran\u2019s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which the government has designated a global terrorist group, according to filings. The government also alleges Hemani used and sold promethazine, <\/strong>an antihistamine used to treat allergies and motion sickness that can boost an opioid high, and used cocaine, although he was prosecuted based on his marijuana use.<\/p>\n

Hemani\u2019s attorneys said the government is trying to \u201cinflame and disparage\u201d Hemani\u2019s character and the only facts that matter are that he was not high when the FBI found the Glock 19 in his Texas home.<\/p>\n

Hemani was charged with violating the federal law that prohibits the possession of firearms by a person who \u201cis an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.\u201d<\/p>\n

More: <\/strong>Supreme Court sides with Biden and upholds regulations of ghost guns to make them traceable<\/a><\/p>\n

Appeals court ruled past drug use not enough to stop gun ownership<\/p>\n

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the law can\u2019t be applied to Hemani under the Supreme Court\u2019s landmark 2022 decision that gun\u00a0prohibitions must be grounded in history that is<\/a>\u00a0“consistent with our tradition of gun regulation.”<\/p>\n

While history and tradition support \u201csome limits on a presently intoxicated person\u2019s right to carry a weapon,\u201d the appeals court said<\/a>, \u201cthey do not support disarming a sober person based solely on past substance usage.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department said the appeals court got it wrong.<\/p>\n

Laws that existed at the time the country was founded restricted the rights of habitual drinkers, even when they were sober, it argued.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd for about as long as legislatures have regulated drugs, they have prohibited the possession of arms by drug users and addicts \u2013 not just by persons under the influence of drugs,\u201d it wrote.<\/p>\n

Law used in hundreds of prosecutions, including Hunter Biden’s<\/p>\n

Since the federal government created its background-check system for firearms in 1998, the federal restriction on drug users has stopped more gun sales than any requirement other than the ban on felons and fugitives owning weapons, according to the filing.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s used in hundreds of prosecutions each year, it said.<\/p>\n

(Hunter Biden, who was later pardoned by his father during President Joe Biden<\/a>\u2019s final weeks in office, was convicted<\/a> in 2024 of violating the law by purchasing a gun despite having a known drug addiction.)<\/p>\n

Hunter Biden trial recap <\/strong>Joe Biden’s son guilty on all charges in historic gun case<\/a><\/p>\n

Hemani\u2019s lawyers argue that the government\u2019s interpretation of the law makes no sense when an estimated 19% of Americans have used marijuana and about 32% own a firearm. That means millions of Americans are violating the law that could put them behind bars for up to 15 years, they said in a filing<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The appeals court, Hemani\u2019s lawyers said, correctly applied the Supreme Court\u2019s past decisions and \u201ccommon sense\u201d to rule that \u201chistory and tradition only supports a ban on carrying firearms while intoxicated.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, two other appeals courts have issued rulings that restrict use of the federal ban: Both courts ruled there should be individualized assessments of defendants’ drug use to determine if their rights could be restricted.<\/p>\n

Trump administration touts program to restore gun rights<\/p>\n

The Justice Department argues that \u201cmarginal\u201d cases are better addressed on a case-by-case basis, through a federal program the Trump administration restarted that lets individuals petition to have their gun rights restored.<\/p>\n

The administration\u2019s championship of that program makes it less surprising that the Justice Department is vigorously defending the ban on drug users having guns, said Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, a research center.<\/p>\n

In addition, the administration has shown a broad desire to crack down on illegal drug use.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some sense, when those two areas are colliding \u2013 gun rights and anti-drug policies \u2013 it looks like anti-drug policies are going to win out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

More: <\/strong>Supreme Court rules Mexico can’t sue US gunmakers over cartel violence<\/a><\/p>\n

Willinger said there\u2019s a relatively strong chance the Supreme Court will get involved, which the justices tend to do when a lower court strikes down or restricts the application of a federal criminal law \u2013 especially if the government asks them to intervene.<\/p>\n

But the high court could also wait to see how other appeals courts handle similar cases and how well the Justice Department\u2019s program for restoring gun rights addresses these concerns, he said.<\/p>\n

The court could announce whether it will take up the issue this fall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Supreme Court upholds requirements of serial numbers and background checks for ghost guns The Supreme Court on Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[5176,6890,5492,30,7798,2438,5483,32,6579,18453,535,127446,5491,5498,8724,20218,127447,106722,16305,47640,6889,714,1106,7898,3081,7900,18443,5331,6584,3577,5179,6591,46,285,1757,1017,7135,5181,49,978,659,1116],"class_list":{"0":"post-363400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-and","9":"tag-biden","10":"tag-branch","11":"tag-courts","12":"tag-courts-u0026-judiciary","13":"tag-department","14":"tag-donald","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-drug","17":"tag-drug-laws-u0026-policy","18":"tag-drugs","19":"tag-drugs-and-medications","20":"tag-executive","21":"tag-executive-branch","22":"tag-fbi","23":"tag-firearms","24":"tag-firearms-u0026-weapons","25":"tag-guns","26":"tag-hunter","27":"tag-hunter-biden","28":"tag-joe","29":"tag-joe-biden","30":"tag-judiciary","31":"tag-justice","32":"tag-laws","33":"tag-legal","34":"tag-marijuana","35":"tag-medications","36":"tag-negative","37":"tag-of","38":"tag-overall","39":"tag-overall-negative","40":"tag-policy","41":"tag-politics","42":"tag-trump","43":"tag-u-s","44":"tag-u-s-department-of-justice","45":"tag-u0026","46":"tag-united-states","47":"tag-us","48":"tag-usa","49":"tag-weapons"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}