It’s no mystery that my position on marijuana has been made clear over the period of time I’ve been putting my thoughts and opinions out on Twitter and YouTube. The longstanding prohibitions on purchasing or even owning a gun if you are a user of marijuana are not a mystery to many. But are those prohibitions constitutionally solid? Do these prohibitions go all the back to 1791, when the 2nd Amendment came to be? Should we be having another look at this?
I think it’s worth starting at alcohol. A current poll on my Twitter page has 84.8% of respondents saying it ruins the most American lives compared to Cigarettes (9.7%) and marijuana (5.5%). Like many young men in the South, I grew around the belligerence of alcohol users, despite my best efforts to stay away from it. The same goes for cigarette smokers. I can probably speak for many people when I say I’ve witnessed way more fights and acts of stupidity from those under the influence of alcohol by far than any other substance. The argument could certainly be made that it’s only because you can go to any corner store and pick up alcohol usually 7 days a week without any form of regulation. Not that I am for giving the Government more reasons to interfere with people’s lives, but hopefully the point is understood. Alcohol ruins a lot of lives. This much is clear. Whether by drunk driving fatalities, overuse fatalities, or any other accidents or violence stemming from alcohol abuse, it’s clear that many people have a drinking problem.
I’m not here to play nanny to anyone. We are all adults. I made a decision to quit drinking and I am now nearly 6 months sober. Alcohol, when used in a social setting and in moderation, doesn’t pose a lot of issues for most. I think it’s worth noting that the bulk of society has had a really rough couple of years, and I’m sure that’s attributing to the rise in alcohol abuse.
New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Bruen, a recent Supreme Court case, has really changed the landscape for how lawmakers must view the 2nd Amendment when they are proposing regulations. In Bruen, Justice Thomas made it clear that modern firearms laws that didn’t exist in 1791 should be dealt considerable scrutiny in the modern age. Without getting in the weeds (no pun intended) on potential upcoming Supreme Court cases related to the abuse of Chevron Deference, let’s just say that Justice Thomas is on a roll and I am here for it. Was that another pun? I digress.
So what laws pertaining to gun ownership existed in 1791? Take a look yourself here. It’s pretty chilling just how elitist and racist gun laws really were even at the time of our nation’s founding. Things have not been perfect for sure, and it’s a shame to see such ideas codified into law in a Country where all men are supposed to be equal. The point I’m making is gun laws in 1791 don’t say anything about the type of guns you could and could not own. They don’t say anything about your state of mind or the substances you used. They did make a distinction about the color of your skin. Terrible. Justice Thomas rightly has a chip on his shoulder. Gun control as a social construct has always been to keep “undesirables” in society from having access to guns. It’s terrible, and I disagree with it, but that’s the landscape as it exists. Considering the poor treatment of a man like Justice Thomas by the MSM and academia, I think he’s wanting some reckoning on this and he will get it. Just wait until “Cargill vs Garland” goes to the Supreme Court.
What does this have to do with marijuana? It’s not hard to figure out why the marijuana question was added to the 4473. Why not alcohol? After all, it clearly ruins more lives and kills more Americans yearly than marijuana. Alcohol certainly impairs your judgement and makes you considerably more belligerent. They chose marijuana because of pressure from pharmaceutical lobbyists for one, and secondly because in 1968, the Nixon administration had it out for people of color in the “war on drugs” that was firing up. The Government hated the anti war left, they hated people of color, and the new gun form was one more way for them to target who they viewed as the most frequent users of marijuana.
Obviously, there were tons of crazy things going on in society including riots, looting, crime, as well as some high profile murders and assassinations. Around 80 percent of Americans went along with the idea for more strict gun laws at the time. I still go back to race though. Most cops back then were very sympathetic to average white people, and of course, had extreme bias against people of color. I think most average Americans viewed this as a necessary evil to keep the people they viewed as troublemakers from being able to obtain a gun easily. They knew they could lie on the form without consequence. They knew that police would never question them about their guns in any way unless they were actually committing a crime. I would argue that this is precisely how law enforcement should handle guns now. If you’re not hurting someone or committing a crime, it doesn’t matter what guns you have.
It’s going to be interesting to see how this all plays out. The tides are already turning in a considerable way on marijuana prohibitions being in conflict with the 2nd Amendment. Some VA clinics are beginning to do preliminary research on Psilocybin as a means to treat depression, PTSD, and other behavioral disorders. It is my hope that our laws will come to terms with our vastly superior knowledge of these compounds compared to the 1960s. The Government also feared the cultural revolution that LSD and other psychedelics were causing at the time. 1968 proved to be a pivotal year for big Government to flex their muscles on free thinkers. History repeats itself, but we can only hope that the critical thinkers of our society can stop these wrongs from being repeated. We are on the horizon of a new breed of philosophers and thinkers who use what nature provides to rid themselves of the need of big pharma’s pills.
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