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The federal government has laid out a nice little gun-control quandary for certain people who wish to purchase a gun from a licensed gun dealer. The feds require the buyer to fill out a form as a condition for buying the gun. If a person refuses to complete and sign the form, he can’t buy the gun. Here is a copy of the form — Form 4473. The quandary laid out by the feds is contained in Question 11(e): “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted, to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?”
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, if a person answers “Yes” to that question, the dealer cannot legally sell him the gun.
The first question that arises is: Why should a person’s personal drug use be of any business to the U.S. government? Why shouldn’t drug use be someone’s own personal business?
The second question is: Why shouldn’t a person who uses drugs have the same right to keep and bear arms and the same right of self-defense as a person who doesn’t use drugs? The last time I checked, the Second Amendment did not state: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed unless a person is using drugs.”
The third question that arises is: Why should a drug user be required to incriminate himself as a condition for purchasing a gun? After all, don’t forget: just because possession, use, and distribution of marijuana has been legalized by a state doesn’t alter the fact that such actions are still illegal under federal law. If a gun buyer were to answer Question 11(e) in the following manner, my hunch is that the feds would target the gun dealer for criminal prosecution for illegally selling that person a gun: “Pursuant to the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it might tend to incriminate me.”
Licensed under the Open Government Licence version 1.0.
The quandary is this: If a drug user tells the truth, he can’t buy the gun. On the other hand, if he lies in order to exercise his right to keep and bear arms, he is subject to a felony prosecution for lying on a federal form.
This is not some esoteric quandary. An estimated 60 million American adults use illicit drugs. That includes an estimated 55 million Americans — 18 percent of the population — who use marijuana. One cannot help but wonder how many of those 60 million Americans bought guns and lied when answering Question 11(e), as Hunter Biden did. That would mean that the feds have a potential felony prosecution hanging over their heads for a very long time. Obviously, any drug user who lied on the form has the incentive to keep his head down and not openly oppose the feds on anything — or else they will come after him for the lie he told on that federal form. It’s a nice indirect way to suppress dissent.
That was the quandary that Hunter Biden, who was recently pardoned by his father, President Biden, faced. He wanted to buy a gun, which is his right. But if he told the truth about his drug usage, then he couldn’t buy the gun — at least not from a licensed dealer. So, he decided to lie about his drug usage in order to buy the gun. That’s how they got him. They convicted him of the felony charge of lying on that federal form about his drug usage.
There is another factor to consider — the fact that answering Question 11(e) puts the government on notice that a person is a drug user and possibly also a drug dealer. Although the law prohibits the government from disclosing the form to other government officials, what drug user or drug distributor wants to put their faith in that provision? After all, we all know that nothing bad is going to happen to any federal official who helps bust a drug user or drug dealer by improperly sharing Form 4473 with the DEA.
Why should anyone be required to fill out any form when buying a gun from a gun dealer or anyone else? Why should anyone have to ask for permission to exercise any fundamental, God-given right? What next: a federal form asking for permission to buy a book about guns? Indeed, should a drug user be permitted to buy such a book?
