Allow me to explain.

Actually, allow someone else to explain.

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.”

The author goes on to point out that even if a state has legalized a particular drug, it's still illegal to own a gun and use it. It's also arguably a form of self-incrimination because admitting to breaking the law on a government document. 

In short, on pretty much every level, the law is stupid and screws over Americans out of at least one right, if not more than one.

The issue with Hunter's pardon isn't that the law he broke is so precious that it must be prosecuted at every opportunity. It's that anyone is prosecuted for it at all.

I get that a lot of habitual drug users are also engaged in various forms of criminal activity, including armed robbery, all to fuel their drug habit. However, these are people who tend to use the black market for a lot of things and have a lot of shady connections. Does anyone really think they can't get a gun?

It's also trivially easy to break this law. Part of why this is rarely prosecuted is that it's rarely as cut-and-dried as it was for Hunter. He wrote about his drug use during a particular time period and it's a period when we know good and well he had a gun because Haley Biden dumped it in a trash can.

But there are other instances of people being prosecuted for this, and there shouldn't be.

So yeah, Hunter got screwed. Unlike most of the others who have been hosed over by this nonsense, though, he had a daddy who could issue a pardon.