During oral arguments in U.S. v. Hemani, Justice Neil Gorsuch addressed the gun ban for “unlawful” users of marijuana by juxtaposing it with evidence that some of the Founding Fathers may be described as “habitual drunkards.”
CBS News noted that the statute on which Hemani centers “was enacted by Congress in 1968 as part of the Gun Control Act and forbids an unlawful drug user from having a firearm. A violation of the law is a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.”
The defendant, Ali Hemani, was charged under the statute “after the FBI found a Glock 9mm pistol, 60 grams of marijuana and a small amount of cocaine during a search of his family’s home in Texas.”
During the oral arguments, Gorsuch said, “One can ask whether the habitual drunkard statutes are sufficiently… analogous. One could also ask though, more basically, whether this defendant would qualify as a habitual user. And I want to explore that before we lost track of it.”
Gorsuch then said, “[As for a] habitual drunkard, the American Temperance Society said back in the day, eight shots of whiskey a day only made you an occasional drunkard. We have to remember the founding era, if you want to invoke the founding era, to be a habitual drunkard you had to do double that.”
He went on to note that John Adams, the Second President of the United States, “took a tankard of hard cider with his breakfast every day.”
Gorsuch pointed out that James Madison, the author of the Second Amendment, “reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day.”
He also pointed to Thomas Jefferson’s alcohol consumption and then asked Principal Deputy Solicitor General Sarah Harris, “Are they all habitual drunkards who would be properly disarmed for life under your theory?”
The case is U.S. v. Hemani, No. 24-1234, in the Supreme Court of the United States.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He holds a PhD in Military History with a focus on the Vietnam War (brown water navy), U.S. Navy since Inception, the Civil War, and Early Modern Europe. He enjoys reading Philosophy and novels by Jack Carr and Nelson DeMille. Follow him on X: @awrhawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
