– NRA Silent as States, Feds Ban Gun Sales to Medical Marijuana Patients:
The National Rifle Association (NRA), which fancies itself a champion of the Second Amendment and gun rights, is nowhere to be found as state governments are moving to confiscate firearms from medical marijuana patients.
Police in Honolulu, Hawaii, recently sent out a letter to 30 medical cannabis patients warning them they had 30 days to hand over their guns. When medical cannabis becomes legal in Ohio in 2018, patients will not be permitted to own or possess firearms. Similar restrictions have been imposed in California and Oregon despite state policy, and they are not new.
In 2011, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive issued a warning that because cannabis is illegal at the federal level, patients cannot possess guns. “There are no exceptions in federal law for marijuana purportedly used for medicinal purposes, even if such use is sanctioned by state law,” the ATF said in 2011.
Despite the NRA’s vehemently opinionated stances on many issues, including whether or not suspected terrorists should have access to guns, the lobbying group had little to say at the time about the federal government’s infringements on cannabis patients’ gun rights, merely ‘reporting’ that “If a person admits marijuana use to a licensed firearm dealer, the dealer is prohibited from transferring a firearm to that person because the dealer will have a ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that the person is an unlawful user.”
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