Back in April of 2011, we reported on the donnybrook between some Oregon sheriffs and the Beaver State’s pistol-packing medical marijuana users. The sheriffs initially refused to issue CCW permits to medical marijuana licensees, on the grounds that bong-loading (medically sanctioned or not) violated the Gun Control Act of 1968. The Oregon Supreme Court disagreed and ordered the sheriffs to issue the CCW permits anyway. Oregon being, after all, a “Shall Issue” CCW state.
The sheriffs appealed to the United States Supreme Court, and today the high court formally declined certiorari. This means that the lower court rulings remain in place as the law of the land. Or at least, of Oregon. And that Oregon sheriffs will have to continue to issue CCW permits to medical marijuana users.
This decision, however, leaves pistol-packin’ pipe-stuffin’ medical marijuana users in a kind of legal limbo, because the Stasi our good friends at the ATFE have decided that medical marijuana users are “unlawful users” of marijuana on Line 11(e) of Form 4473. By this administrative fiat, medical marijuana users are thus ineligible to receive firearms.
The upshot of all this is that medical marijuana users can keep their guns if they’ve got them, but they might have a hard time buying them through FFL licensees. I think that this kind of stupid rule will only encourage straw-man purchases by otherwise law-abiding patients, but maybe I’m wrong because the ATFE wouldn’t do something foolish like that, would they?