The prosecution charges that Mr. Biden violated a rarely used statute that it claims prevented him from owning a firearm as an unlawful user of a controlled substance, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3), but that statute’s status-based prohibition on gun ownership recently was struck down as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. See United States v. Daniels, 77 F.4th 337 (5th Cir. 2023). Not only does the unconstitutionality of Section 922(g)(3) render Mr. Biden’s alleged violation of that unconstitutional statute baseless, it compels the same conclusion as to the prosecution’s charges that Mr. Biden made a false statement in denying his status as a user of a controlled substance under 18 U.S.C. § 922(a)(6) and caused the seller (a holder of a federal firearms license) to maintain a record of this false answer in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 924(a)(1)(A).
Because persons protected by the Second Amendment can no longer be denied gun ownership due simply to past drug use—a practice inconsistent with this nation’s historical tradition on firearm regulation—any false statement by Mr. Biden concerning his status as having used a controlled substance no longer concerns “any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale” of a firearm. … Quite simply, asking about Mr. Biden’s status as a user of a controlled status is constitutionally irrelevant to whether he can be denied his Second Amendment right to gun ownership. Likewise, Section 924(a)(1)(A)’s requirements concerning maintaining records free of false information is no longer implicated because it is not a statute that “criminalizes a false answer to an ultra vires question.”
— Motion to dismiss charges in United States v. Biden
