If you’ve recently moved to Colorado — or just to a different county in Colorado — there might come a time when an employee of your local sheriff’s office gives you an ultimatum: Smoke pot or carry a gun.
Of course, that’s only if you’re trying to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Depending on what county you live in, a question on the application asks if you use marijuana. If you say ‘yes’ on certain applications, then no concealed handgun permit for you.
Laurie Thomas, coordinator for the concealed handgun permitting program at the El Paso County sheriff’s office, puts it bluntly.
“They either want to smoke marijuana or have a concealed weapons permit,” she says of those who apply. “Common sense. You have to have one or the other. You can’t do both.”
In Colorado, it’s the county sheriff who decides whether to issue, deny, or revoke concealed handgun permits.
Last year, a Colorado group called Guns for Everyone
tried unsuccessfully to gather enough signatures for a ballot initiative that would change the application process so lawful users of marijuana could obtain concealed carry permits. Two firearms instructors whose students kept asking about the marijuana issue launched the proposal. They’re currently working on how best to tackle the topic again this year.
“In Colorado the law states that you cannot be an illegal user of any narcotics under state and federal law,” says Issac Chase, a Colorado Springs firearms instructor and a co-founder of Guns for Everyone. “The goal of our campaign was to get rid of that language that said federal law.”
The group wasn’t able to get enough Coloradans to sign their petition in time, though. This year they’re hoping to perhaps find a supportive lawmaker who might be interested in taking up their cause. Gun bills have lately been on the agenda for Republicans in the state Senate.
Chase says he gets plenty of questions from students in his firearms training classes about how Colorado’s laws on marijuana intersect with gun ownership. A common question is whether someone who has a medical marijuana card, commonly known as a ‘red card’, can lawfully own a firearm or obtain a concealed weapons permit here.
In Colorado, buying a gun or getting a concealed carry permit requires a background check. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation uses a system called InstaCheck and runs information through the National Instant Criminal Background Check system, or NICS. The bureau also runs background checks for county sheriff’s offices for those applying for concealed weapons permits.
“CBI InstaCheck does not access medical marijuana information for its background check process as the NICS state point of contact,” CBI spokeswoman Susan Medina told
The Colorado Independent.
But then there’s the question about whether marijuana users in Colorado, where pot is legal, are even allowed to own a gun. The feds say they aren’t.
When buying a gun, purchasers have to fill out a form from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, which asks, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana…or any other controlled substance?”
That’s federal paperwork, and marijuana is illegal under federal law. But it’s legal in Colorado, so some pot-smoking Coloradans who buy guns here might be doing so under the interpretation that they’re not “unlawful” users.
The feds don’t see it that way.
“Under federal law marijuana is still a controlled substance, meaning that people who are marijuana users are not able to lawfully possess a firearm regardless of the state laws,” says Lisa Meiman, a spokesperson for the ATF’s Denver field division. She says in 2011 the ATF sent a letter to all licensed gun dealers reminding them that it’s still unlawful to sell firearms to anyone they have a reason to believe does drugs.
“If you are a user or addicted to a controlled substance such as marijuana, even with a medical license, even if it’s legal in the state to use recreationally, you are not permitted to own a firearm,” Meiman says.
Edgar Antillon, a firearms instructor and co-founder of the Guns for Everyone group, says he thinks some marijuana users in Colorado probably answer ‘no’ on the ATF form thinking since pot is legal in Colorado they’re covered.
). And the thing is is that it never gets less crazy. This country is a big clusterfuck of an evolution from mistakes made and learned from.
