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15 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
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That is the sentence risked by anyone who held an active medicinal marijuana license in the past twelve months and dares to possess any firearm—a policy the government defends by literally claiming the power to strip Americans of their constitutional rights on a whim. As outrageous as this is, we must welcome the opportunity to demonstrate that tyranny is nonpartisan and can only be defeated through nonpartisan effort. Democrats overwhelmingly support the legalization of cannabis, Republicans have made guns part of their identity, and each party claims to champion liberty with more passion than the other, yet they collaborate in allowing this travesty to continue. By loudly challenging them to back their rhetoric with action, however, we can begin the process of permanently correcting such disregard for their constituents.

Consider these facts:

 

  • Approval for legalizing medicinal marijuana is at 88% among all Americans and 78% among conservatives.

 

  • 40 states have legalized medicinal use and/or decriminalized general use.

 

  • Kamala Harris pledged to decriminalize the use of marijuana, and House Democrats twice voted almost unanimously to do so by descheduling it from the Controlled Substances Act. This would end the firearm prohibition.

 

  • Nearly half of Senate Democrats likewise stated that “the only way to remedy the most concerning consequences of marijuana prohibition is to deschedule marijuana altogether” and that “the longer marijuana remains scheduled in the CSA, the longer our communities face senselessly severe penalties.”

 

 

  • Gun ownership had been dramatically rising even before its pandemic-era spike, with the number of background checks per year more than doubling between 2009 and 2019.

 

 

  • More than eight million Americans acknowledged using physician-prescribed cannabis in 2020, and the annual rate of increase indicates that the current number of patients could now be over 13 million.

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  • The number of votes that will determine the winner of the next presidential election is slightly over 80,000.

Lawmakers should be tripping over each other to claim credit

for undoing this senseless restriction, so why aren’t they?

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Republicans, for their part, simply seem wedded by tradition to the futile war against 1930s-style “reefer madness.” It is only members of that party who have at least proposed repeal legislation, however, and Donald Trump recently signaled support for legalization of even recreational marijuana.

Democrats’ share of the blame requires far more explanation, as it is fundamentally the product of a coordinated disinformation campaign by depraved authoritarians posing as historical experts. Overly dramatic as it sounds, such people have spent decades infiltrating academia in order to promote an insane lie: that the right to keep and bear arms was viewed for most of American history as protecting only government organizations and/or their active members. 

The overwhelming majority of Americans rejected this so-called “collective right” even before District of Columbia v. Heller did in 2008, but in just the past few years:

 

  • The Supreme Court of Hawaii unanimously declared that “the Second Amendment provided a collective right” which only “protects a state’s right to have a militia.”

 

  • Major gun control organization March for our Lives released its 2024 policy agenda, which complains that “many Americans think that the 2A has always been a stalwart protector of an individual right” and cites the need to “remind the public that the Second Amendment as we know it was created—not discovered—in 2008.”

 

  • Sen. Chris Murphy wrote that “the 2nd Amendment is about collective, not personal defense.”

 

  • The president of top gun control group Brady lamented that “politicians currently promote a false interpretation of the Second Amendment.”

 

  • Federal judge Carlton W. Reeves, Chairman of the US Sentencing Commission, issued an order based in part on the “glaring disagreement” about “whether the Second Amendment confers a broad, individual right to bear arms, or a more limited, collective right.”

 

  • The most prominent gun control advocate in the country instructed his million-plus social media followers that the Second Amendment is “essentially a right to a national guard.”

Despite being repudiated by both the American public and the Supreme Court, “collective right” clearly still exerts a powerful influence on policy. It is what allowed federal courts to validate every gun control law challenged from the mid-20th century until 2008, yet those same restrictions are still enthusiastically defended and routinely upheld despite the formal night-and-day shift from a legal framework in which civilians don’t have any arms rights to one in which they do. A lingering quasi-religious devotion to “collective right” is what makes so many judges and other public officials defiantly resist the precedent they are sworn to respect, and though currently exemplified by the *relatively* benign ban on firearm possession by cannabis patients, it is this same theory that an expanded Supreme Court would use to overturn Heller and pave the way for the stated goal of “No more guns. Gone.”

This persistent myth bars any further compromise whatsoever, and those seeking only reasonable regulation should want to disavow the wild-eyed extremists who rob them of all credibility—rational and good citizen activists can’t fathom why gun owners won’t agree to “common sense,” failing to realize that this resistance has formed largely against their own unwitting rejection of history. Luckily for all but those about to be exposed as frauds, a massive trove of new evidence finally shatters “collective right” beyond question. After seeing that this narrative is nothing more than a fairytale, please continue here to help reverse its most appalling result (so far).

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