A 4473 is a Federal form. Marijuana use is illegal at the Federal level. Is this clear enough for you? A MMJ user who purchases or possesses a firearm or ammunition is a felon. What part of this do you not understand? It's not for a court to decide. It's illegal.
If you don't understand it yet then I can't explain it to you. It's legal on a state level but illegal on a federal level, so whether that person who's a legal state user is an "illegal user" or not is entirely uncertain.
I recommend you research supremacy clause and desuetude, because there's not a black and white answer as to whether the federal law trumps the state laws in this matter, especially now that they've essentially abandoned their power to enforce it as it applies to state legal marijuana. As in literally Congress has forbade the justice department from using their funding to pursue anything having to do with state legal weed (which includes the ATF by the way). For the supremacy clause to apply, likely the supreme court would have to argue that Congress fully intended to preclude the possibility of states having their own medical programs, which would be a VERY tough roe to hoe, especially in this political environment. Especially since the federal government has had its own medical marijuana programs in the past, eroding the very foundation of the scheduling in the first place, which was based on the assumption that it had no medical value whatsoever.
But you don't have to take my word for it. The banks who do business with state dispensaries? IF you're right, and state medical cannabis is in fact illegal, those executives are committing enough felonies to land them in prison for many, many decades. Do you honestly think their legal counsel would even for one second think about signing off on that if there were a snowball's chance they would ever be prosecuted? I think not.
And with the billions of dollars in taxes at stake, do you really think the states will tolerate having the legality of their programs challenged? As already pointed out, if the federal government even begins to tug at that thread, they will bring down upon themselves the biggest legal shitstorm of the most epic proportions ever seen. 75% of states and DC. Hundreds of organizations with thousands of members who run multimillion dollar operations (and who have a vested interest in not spending decades in prison). Multibillionaires and their hedge funds who are heavily invested in the industry. Not to mention all the congressmen who are undoubtedly profiting from the industry in one way or another. You have no concept of the power and money that backs this thing.
Like I said, WE LOST. It's over. Finito. The fat lady has not only sung, she's gone hoarse.
And while I would greatly prefer people didn't smoke pot for their own good, I'm not about to alienate an entire group upon whose coattails we can hitch our wagon. They're many, they have a lot of political power and social capital at the moment, and they have a culture of distrust and outright hostility towards the government and its regulations. These are people and organizations who know all too well what happens when the government has too much power, so they're predisposed to be sympathetic to our cause. By continuing to alienate them and spread absurd misinformation as fact, you are hurting our chances of gaining cultural normalcy within our own society.
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Let me explain it to you this way. The state doesn't issue the FFL, the BATFE does. As long as they are the issuing body and rules must be met at the Federal level, it's not really hard to understand. The state is not the one who does the background check, it's at the Federal level. I'm not sure why you're having a hard time understanding this. Whether you like it or not, under current regulations, BATFE has the final say.
And for what it's worth, those banks are laundering drug money. That was the whole purpose of the bank in Norman that is not federally insured. The whole reason people in Colorado had to pay for utilities and bills in cash. If the .gov decided to, those banks would be shut down and the funds of suspicious accounts seized and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
It's not about alienation. It's about following laws. Rules are the only thing that separate us from the animals.
And for what it's worth, those banks are laundering drug money. That was the whole purpose of the bank in Norman that is not federally insured. The whole reason people in Colorado had to pay for utilities and bills in cash. If the .gov decided to, those banks would be shut down and the funds of suspicious accounts seized and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
It's not about alienation. It's about following laws. Rules are the only thing that separate us from the animals.
Good grief...
The ATF doesn't have the authority to say whether the supremacy clause can apply to state medical programs, which is ultimately the question at hand.
The law in question here is the one about lying on a 4473. And whether someone is lying or not depends on whether the supremacy clause can be made to apply to state medical marijuana.
Let's say in the future Congress were to pass a spending bill that didn't preclude the ATF from prosecuting someone on these grounds, and they found a test case to take to court. The question isn't whether someone lied about using marijuana, but whether they lied about being an UNLAWFUL user. Which depends entirely upon whether state programs are superseded by the supremacy clause.
It would undoubtedly go to the supreme court, because the implications would be huge all around. What you don't realize is that a conviction on those grounds would be an affirmation of the court that the supremacy clause does in fact apply to state programs, which would turn everyone involved in them into overnight felons. It would also force the states to shut down their programs and stop collecting the billions of dollars in tax revenues they had been counting on. That would actually bankrupt California.
And let's be realistic. If the federal government decided to try and stop state medical programs, they wouldn't do it this way. If they did, they would be awakening two sleeping giants instead of just the one. That is, they would be fighting the gun lobby and the cannabis lobby both at the same time. If they're going to open that can of worms, they're going to find a test case that doesn't invite pushback from two different powerful lobbies.
So should FFLs knowingly sell guns to potheads? Of course not! Should potheads answer no to the question? It's a calculated risk, so that's just a decision they would have to make for themselves.
Should people go around saying it's a felony to answer no on a 4473? Absolutely not, because it's a bald faced lie. Half truth at best.
Even the ATF doesn't make that claim. All the ATF says is, "Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside."
That warning has also been omitted from the new efile system, so they're obviously slowing their roll on that front, no doubt due to the very things we've been discussing here. In any case, all the warning amounts to is an FYI.
I also understand that making any false oral or written statement, or exhibiting any false or misrepresented identification with respect to this transaction, is a crime punishable as a felony under Federal law, and may also violate State and/or local law.
From the 4473. No half truth, no bald faced lie. You've contradicted yourself again in the above statement. You say ATF doesn't have the authority, but they do. It isn't a state firearms license, it's a federal firearms license.
From the 4473. No half truth, no bald faced lie. You've contradicted yourself again in the above statement. You say ATF doesn't have the authority, but they do. It isn't a state firearms license, it's a federal firearms license.
You're either not reading or not comprehending.
It's only lying if it's UNLAWFUL!!! It is not at all clear whether state users are "unlawful" users. Simply using marijuana doesn't make you an unlawful user. For example, you can fly to Amsterdam every weekend and eat your bodyweight in magic brownies, and that doesn't make you an unlawful user. Or the federal medical marijuana patients. They are most definitely not unlawful.
So for the umpteenth time, the question isn't whether they use it or not, but whether state legal use is illegal under federal law, which DEPENDS ENTIRELY UPON HOW THE COURTS APPLY THE SUPREMACY CLAUSE IN THIS CASE.
The ATF cannot and does not say whether state users are illegal users under federal law, because there's no ruling on that yet, and probably never will be. All they're saying is hey FYI it's still illegal under federal law.
Also note that there's an additional burden to prosecution even if the courts were to rule that the supremacy clause did apply, because at the time the person made the statement their attorney can argue that the answer to the question couldn't be known, and therefore answering no wasn't a lie.
It would be like if they asked the question, Is the cat alive or dead? Let's say quantum mechanics solves that problem someday and definitively says the cat is alive. Were you lying if you answered that the cat was dead prior to that discovery? Of course you weren't. You were doing your best to answer truthfully with the information you had at the time.
FIFY.
Please get your FFL and sell some guns to a user that will acknowledge they are a drug user on the 4473. Call in to get approval to proceed and let them know your going to allow someone that answered yes to get the firearm.
You can argue your point in an orange jump suit all the way to SCOTUS, IF, SCOTUS will hear it because they have not taken on a 2A case in 10 years or so, refusing to hear any and allowing the circuit courts to make the decisions to date.
Typically the libs judge shop in the 9th circuit to get a ruling which is the most overturned circuit in the country as I'm sure you well know with your legal acumen.
Your argument once again is at the stratosphere level in legal arguments while the basic FFL cannot speculate on future court rulings, appeals, continuations, etc that may last for years when transferring a firearm to a buyer.
They have an legal obligation to follow the laws as stated with penalty of not doing so.
We would all love to see your utopia of firearm sales sail through the courts, but the current political winds do not favor sailing in that direction.
Just because cannabis is illegal under federal law doesn't mean that the patients under state medical programs are illegal users. That's the part you're not comprehending.
All we know is that there is a possible conflict between the state laws and federal law, which invokes the supremacy clause, meaning only the supreme court is going to be able to answer the question. But that's never going to happen, because congress has precluded the justice department from ever bringing that case to trial in the first place.
First of all, if someone answers yes then it's an automatic denial. The question we are arguing is not what happens when they answer yes, but if they can legally answer no.
Second of all, I've already said several times that FFLs shouldn't knowingly sell guns to medical marijuana patients, because they have been graciously gifted with case law specifically protecting them from liability for erroring on the side of caution while this gets sorted out. It's a don't ask don't tell situation.
Third, it's not a gun rights issue. If someone were prosecuted for answering no, the prosecutor would be arguing that they lied, because as a state legal user they were in fact still in violation of federal law. What that means is that the prosecutor would be invoking the supremacy clause, and he would be challenging all state medical marijuana programs in every respect, not just how it applies to gun rights. The reason the state medical programs are continued to allowed to operate is because it's presumed they are legal until proven otherwise. If successfully prosecuted, this hypothetical case of yours would mean an abrupt end to all medical marijuana, which would oblige the DEA to move in and start charging everyone wholesale.
Even if the supremacy clause were successfully applied, there would be all kinds of legal defenses, because the person's legal status was unclear at the time. And because the prosecution of a single individual amongst millions would be the most arbitrary and capricious case ever brought before the court.
Fifth, this hypothetical case will never exist, because an act of congress precludes it from existing. What you're failing to realize is that an act of congress would be required first to even allow the possibility of a case like this being brought in the first place. That's obviously not going to happen.
What you're not understanding is that this doesn't swing both ways. There's no legal argument for state medical programs to be lawful, but for someone to be lying if they answer no. Therefore, if the state programs are continued to be assumed to be legal, the users under those programs are not unlawful users, and therefore cannot be said to have lied by answering no.
The one and only legal avenue for this to swing both ways is if congress acts to allow the justice department to bring a case, the supremacy clause is successfully invoked, and the states simply continue to act outside the law, despite being put on notice that their programs are illegal. It would be much the same as the sanctuary cities, where what they're doing is obviously illegal, but the federal government simply refuses to act.
However, if they were to successfully only prosecute a select number of people, which would be arbitrary and capricious to the extreme, we would have much bigger things to worry about. In that kind of legal environment, they could get away with whatever they wanted, and we would all likely be in jail anyways under some trumped up charges. We're talking full on political purge at that point. So when you're looking at realistic conditions under which someone would actually get in trouble, we're talking either thousands or tens of thousands of people being locked up for pot, or full on purge. Both are unlikely, and both would be disastrous beyond imagination for this country, and likely tear it apart.
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