The New York Times Suddenly Cares About Gun Rights

When the Supreme Court issued its 6-3 decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), striking down as an unconstitutional violation of the Second Amendment a central part of New York State’s gun-licensing process requiring that an applicant had to demonstrate a special need to obtain a concealed carry permit, the Editorial Board of the New York Times was up in arms, so to speak.

In a jointly authored column, the board lamented that the Court had “embraced a vision of the Second Amendment that is profoundly at odds with precedent and the dangers that American communities face today, upending the longstanding practice of letting states decide for themselves how to regulate gun possession in public.”

It added that the decision revealed “the vast gulf between ideologues on the court [those who were members of the Court majority] and those Americans — ordinary people and their representatives in Congress — who want this country to be safer from guns.”

Hence the editors applauded the enactment of a federal law tightening restrictions on gun possession.

Well, not so fast.

The Times recently ran another story lamenting the plight of individuals living in states like Florida who are prohibited from owning guns because they are admitted users of marijuana or other “controlled substances” under Federal law. Even though “there are relatively few limitations at the federal level on who is eligible to purchase or possess firearms and ammunition,” the Times reports, “participating in a state’s medical marijuana system remains a barrier to gun ownership.”

This issue “is shaping up to be one of the next legal frontiers in the national debate over gun policy,” we are told. Even though 38 states, the District of Columbia, and four U.S. territories have legalized marijuana for medical purposes, “the drug remains technically illegal” under federal law, “which classifies it as having no currently accepted medical use.” (In fact, when I, purely for research purposes – honest! – asked an accomplished oncologist at one of America’s leading cancer treatment centers several years ago, he confirmed that marijuana had not been demonstrated to treat any form of pain more effectively than legally available pain medications. The doctor himself nonetheless favored legalization because, given the miseries his patients were undergoing, he figured that they should be entitled to have a little fun in their lives.)

This column, it should be noted, takes no position on whether marijuana should be legalized, for either “medical” or recreational purposes, even though the nation currently faces an anomalous situation in which a drug that is illegal under federal law is legal under the laws of most states.

It may be relevant here, however, to cite the judgment of Kevin Sabet, president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a group that opposes legalization, as reported in the Times story, that “it is prudent to prohibit both medical and recreational marijuana users from having firearms,” since the “stronger strains of marijuana” that are currently available, “with higher levels of the psychoactive component THC than in decades past… can have adverse effects that result in violent behavior.” (Veterans of the ‘60s need to recognize that the “pot” now on the market is a lot more powerful than what they were accustomed to using.)

In contrast, Karen O’Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project (a pro-legalization organization) has maintained that nobody “should have to surrender their constitutional rights,” including gun ownership, “to treat themselves with something far safer than alcohol,” as she maintains marijuana is.

But why is the Times suddenly concerned with protecting the right to gun ownership, for which it has previously advocated the most severe restrictions? It cites Judge Patrick R. Wyrick of the U.S. Western District Court, who dismissed the indictment of a man who had been arrested and then indicted after Oklahoma police found him in possession of both marijuana and a loaded gun in his car, holding that federal law in this instance “takes a sledgehammer” to the right of armed self-defense, since the use of marijuana was not “a violent, forceful, or threatening act” nor one that had historically been an element in firearms regulation.

But as the Times itself notes, barring marijuana users from gun ownership dates back to the Gun Control Act of 1968, “passed during a period of high-profile assassinations.” On the other hand, “about 5 percent” of those convicted of gun offenses, according to a 2022 report by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, “were illegal drug users or were addicted to controlled substances at the time of their offenses.”

Nonetheless, the Times story highlights the problem faced by a Florida woman in her 70s who sought to purchase a pistol for self-defense purposes, feeling vulnerable since a man who’d been fired from a business she owned had stormed out of the store “threatening vengeance.” The woman was blocked from making the purchase because she had acknowledged, in a firearms transaction form she was obliged to complete, that she was taking marijuana to relieve knee pain and insomnia, in accordance with her state’s medical marijuana program.

The Times has long displayed solicitude for the alleged injustices suffered by individuals who in the past were jailed for marijuana use before their states legalized it. It has recommended that such people be given priority in the allocation of licenses to open legal pot shops in states like New York. But will its solicitude now extend so far as to adopt a more sympathetic outlook towards individuals seeking to exercise their right to purchase a gun, freeing them from excessive restrictions on that right – whether or not they were marijuana users?

Times readers: stay tuned.

David Lewis Schaefer is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at College of the Holy Cross.