The right to keep and bear arms is preserved in our Constitution via the Second Amendment. The right to light up a joint, however, isn't anywhere in there. Not in the Second Amendment or anywhere else.
Still, marijuana is becoming more and more acceptable as most states have legalized it to some degree, even as federal law looks the other way, which creates an interesting double standard.
Now, I've written a lot about my view of marijuana, at least as it applies to gun rights. If the feds aren't going to enforce those laws, it shouldn't impact people's rights in the least.
But Lee Williams sent out a story this morning that kind of piqued my interest, and it had nothing to do with pot.
Peter Brennan, his wife Jacqueline Shaw and their eight-year-old son Archie Brennan will never forget the day the ATF raided their Texas gun-parts shop, which is located in northeast Texas near the Oklahoma border.
“We pulled up to our gun shop in an old GMC truck and all these cars surrounded us,” Peter Brennan told the Second Amendment Foundation. “They had seven cars and a load of tactical guys jumping out. We didn’t realize what was happening. We hadn’t done anything wrong?”
They agents even tried separating the family.
“They kept trying to yank my son away from his mom,” Brennan said. “These agents — some wearing man-buns — were trying to act as hard as nails. A lot of people were watching. They handcuffed me and put me in one of their cars.”
“You know why we’re here — not by accident,” one of the agents told Brennan.
“That’s debatable,” Brennan replied, as they tore his shop apart. “Like you guys don’t make mistakes. Nothing in the shop is illegal in Texas. I want to get a lawyer.”
The ATF agents seized a lot of property: CNC tools, buffer tubes, AR parts and aluminum blanks that were just blocks of metal. ATF agents pulled the hard drive out of Brennan’s CNC machine, which he had recently purchased for $170,000.
“I sunk everything we owned to buy that,” Brennan said. “I was in a dark hole.”
Why was Brennan raided?
Well, it seems he was building suppressors.
Sounds like an open-and-shut case, right? Well, it's not. For one thing, Brennan hasn't been charged in over two years, putting him in some kind of legal limbo.
For another, there are questions of whether he did anything wrong.
After he opened his gun-parts shop, many of Brennan’s customers began asking him about silencers, which are also known as suppressors.
“We would get asked about them all the time,” he said. “They said you can sell suppressors in Texas if they’re made in Texas and stay in Texas. They showed us the law.”
One of Brennan’s friends worked for the local sheriff’s office. He told Brennan he had watched Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sign the state law, known as Texas House Bill 957, in September 2021.
The state law is very clear: “A firearm suppressor that is manufactured and remains in this state is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of the United States Congress to regulate interstate commerce.”
Now, Brennan notes an ATF agent--one present on the day of his place being raided--was in his shop weeks earlier--and said nothing about the suppressors. He just wanted to know about pistol braces.
But what stuck out to me is the fact that this is legal under state law.
The ATF issued a letter saying they wouldn't recognize the legality of these suppressors regardless of what Texas ruled, but this bothers me.
Both suppressors and marijuana are forbidden under the letter of federal law. While those laws are enforced by different agencies, they both fall under the Department of Justice and both agencies are there to enforce the law.
Now, states are approving marijuana not just for medical use but also for recreational use. They're selling it in corner stores and just about any adult can walk in and buy pot for whatever they want. This is legal under state law, but not federal law. The feds just look the other way.
But Brennan's life is on hold because he sold an item that was legalized under Texas state law, yet the feds refuse to look the other way.
Keep in mind that suppressors are useless without guns. If gun control works, there's absolutely nothing at all a suppressor can do. Marijuana, on the other hand, doesn't need literally anything else that's controlled.
So why the double standard?
I can make arguments for or against Brennan's actions. I can make the case he did nothing wrong and I can also see the argument that he was an idiot for not at least consulting an attorney before he started making suppressors.
But all of those arguments are irrelevant here and now. What matters is that the feds are displaying a horrendous double standard when it comes to state laws regarding things illegal at the federal level.
