The Department of Justice has struck again. As part of the ongoing Florida lawsuit on whether medical cannabis users should have the right to own guns, the DOJ claimed recently that MMJ users are inherently dangerous and therefore unfit to possess firearms.
Kyle Jaeger said that the DOJ is comparing cannabis consumers to domestic abusers with a 'propensity' toward violence.
Attorneys representing Florida's Agriculture Minister Nikki Fried, who is behind a Second Amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration, filed a response brief earlier this month after the Department of Justice urged the federal court to dismiss the case. The plaintiffs were seeking a hearing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida.
In its initial request for a dismissal of the lawsuit, the DOJ pointed out offensive parallels to past gun prohibitions for groups such as Native Americans, Catholics, panhandlers, and those who refuse to take an oath of allegiance to the government and people who shoot guns while drunk. The DOJ is putting non-violent cannabis offenses in the same category as domestic abusers, which is why they're now in the same category as non-violent cannabis offenses. The aim of the comparison was to justify disarming people charged with misdemeanors.
Marijuana users also engage in criminal activity that renders firearms possession dangerous, albeit for different reasons i.e. The propensity for violence for domestic violence misdemeanants, and the impairing effects of marijuana for users of marijuana, DOJ's new filing says.
The DOJ replied that a person who possesses a firearm will have access to that firearm when she uses marijuana, because the plaintiffs argument that they can safely use a firearm when not using or under the influence of marijuana. Because marijuana impairs judgment, the danger exists that she will fail to exercise sound judgment and use the firearm while impaired. In April, Fried filed a Second Amendment lawsuit against the Biden administration, which she announced at the 4th Annual Cannabis Capital Conference in Miami.
She said that no patient should have to choose between medicine and employment, a roof over their head, access to capital or their constitutional rights.
Fried pointed out on several occasions that the constitutional rights of state-legal medical marijuana patients in Florida are restricted because of the current language on a federal form that prohibits them from buying a firearm.
Fried said in June that this is not about guns. This is related to the fact that for decades, marijuana patients have been discriminated against — that they see their rights not being fully afforded to them, whether it is on housing or access to banking or employment. This is one of their other rights. In July, Fried filed a revised complaint in a federal district court on the heels of the Supreme Court's decision to dismiss several cases and send them to lower courts for reconsideration. The cases included the bans on assault-style rifles in Maryland and large-capacity ammunition magazines in New Jersey and California.