Second Amendment advocates are criticizing a pair of recent developments around marijuana and firearms—issues they say underscore the need for further reform.
Last month during a routine audit of a gun dealer, a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) investigator reportedly ordered the store to stop the sale of a pistol because the investigator claimed the would-be buyer smelled of marijuana.
“I wasn’t high,” the prospective buyer told the Second Amendment Foundation, according to the outlet Ammoland, which referred to the individual only as Daniel. “None of this makes any sense to me.”
Daniel had already filed federal paperwork saying he was eligible to own a firearm and had passed a background check for the handgun, according to the report. When he went to pick it up at a Plant City, Florida store, however, the ATF industry operations investigator reportedly halted the sale.
ATF spokesman Jason Medina acknowledged that the smell of marijuana could have been from exposure to second-hand smoke and not an indication that the gun buyer himself had consumed cannabis.
“That’s true,” Medina told Ammoland.
Meanwhile in a federal appeals court case, the Department of Justice argued in a filing earlier this month that marijuana users “are more likely than ordinary citizens to misuse firearms,” likening them to “the mentally ill” as well as “infants, idiots, lunatics, and felons.”
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