Pubdate: Thu, 11 Apr 2013
Source: Durango Herald, The (CO)
Copyright: 2013 The Durango Herald
Contact: http://durangoherald.com/write_the_editor/
Website: http://durangoherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/866
Author: Chase Olivarius-Mcallister

GUNS VERBOTEN FOR POT USERS

Pawn Shop Cites Federal Drug Laws to Deny Firearm Sales

Rocky Mountain Pawn & Gun is confident about its own cultural 
identity. Before entering the shop  a palace of weaponry and 
camouflage gear  customers must pass a sign indicating that hippies 
should use the back door.

Then, in a glass display case inside the shop, another sign reads, 
"Federal Law Prohibits the sale of firearms to medical marijuana card holders."

According to Chris Burnett, the store's manager, the second sign 
isn't a "hippies can't have guns" joke, but an edict handed down from 
the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a federal agency.

Burnett said the shop put up the sign after an ATF agent called Rocky 
Mountain Pawn & Gun and said "anyone who has a medical marijuana card 
will not pass a background check."

The ATF did not respond to requests for comment.

Nearly 100,000 Coloradoans are licensed to use medical marijuana, 
which treats a range of ailments, including pain, insomnia, nausea 
and vomiting, loss of appetite and muscle spasms.

Colorado law is in conflict with federal law, which criminalizes 
marijuana in all circumstances and by definition applies to the whole country.

Burnett said on the application to own a firearm, which is submitted 
to the federal government, the applicant is asked whether he or she 
has ever used illegal drugs, and because marijuana is illegal 
according to federal law, medical marijuana users must answer "yes" 
or commit a crime  meaning they are categorically disqualified from 
gun ownership.

While the gun lobby and the grass lobby are not intuitive political 
allies, this is the too-rare legal determination that has both in uproar.

"It's difficult to explain it to people who we have to turn away, 
because they say, 'I did this the right way, I got a permit,' 
meanwhile, people who are buying it from their neighbors can still go 
out and by a gun," Burnett said.

Though Burnett feared the federal government had amassed a database 
of medical marijuana users, against which the federal government 
would cross-check firearm applications as it putatively does felony 
convictions, Mark Sally, spokesman with the Colorado Department of 
Public Health and Environment, said that was impossible.

Only the state has that list, he said, and like all matters between 
doctors and patients, it is confidential.

Stuart Prall, a lawyer and marijuana advocate, said Rocky Mountain 
Pawn's dilemma was indicative of the confusing state of the law 
regarding cannabis.

"I don't think anybody should be denied rights, because people are 
taking one medicine as opposed to another medicine, and that's true 
for parental rights, gun rights, any rights," he said.

He said the unresolved and increasing contradictions in state law and 
federal law regarding marijuana meant that "it's completely confusing 
to everybody."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom