This is an interesting take on United States v. Hemani. The author highlights a “weird dichotomy”: we treat gun ownership as a supreme individual right, yet the government strips it away based on “collectivism”—placing people into “disfavored categories” (like marijuana users) without any proof of actual dangerousness.
The article isn’t just about the Second Amendment; it’s a sharp, civil-libertarian critique of how federal prosecutors use inconsistent drug laws as a “we’re out of ideas” backup plan when other investigations fail. Whether you’re pro-gun or not, the debate over whether “one gummy bear” or a pint of whiskey in 1791 should determine your constitutional rights today is a wild look at our current legal reality.
Gun rights have a funny dichotomy about them:
- The way you get gun rights is the height of individual freedom. The will of the collective be damned, you are born with a freedom that supersedes the concerns of millions. Go on, buy an armory of deadly weapons.
- The way you lose gun rights is often the height of collectivism. The prohibitors in the relevant portion of federal law (18 USC 922(g)) sometimes require individualized findings by a court (e.g. you are banned for life from touching a gun if you are “convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year”), but even then, there’s no individualized finding of dangerousness. The finding is just that you belong to a disfavored category of people. And for some parts of 922(g), no court is involved at all. It’s a felony for you to touch a gun if you’re in the US on a nonimmigrant visa, or if you’ve ever been committed to a mental institution against your will (even for just a night, and no matter how long ago it was).
It’s also a felony for you to touch a gun if you are “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance”. That was the subject of oral arguments this week at the Supreme Court in United States v. Hemani. The background of the case is that Mr. Hemani was under investigation for illegal association a designated terrorist organization. The FBI never charged Hemani on that basis, but in a search of his home, they found a Glock, some marijuana, and some cocaine. So they did what federal agents often do when the original investigation fizzles. No, they didn’t charge him with wire fraud, but good guess. They didn’t charge him with lying to them either. They charged him with a gun crime 🎉, the third leg of the We’re Out of Ideas stool that every federal prosecutor gets their first day on the job.
By Open Source Defense
