Gun control advocates are having a tough time of it these days. After NYSRPA v Bruen, they’re actually having to prove their gun control laws are constitutional when they’re challenged, and to do so, they have to prove that similar restrictions were common practice when the constitution was ratified. Add the 14th Amendment (equal protection) into the mix and there are very few gun control laws that we should expect to survive legal scrutiny.

None of that, however, has stopped the gun control industry from trying to find creative workarounds that make them look awful in court filings. They’ve tried to use blatantly racist past practices to justify today’s gun laws, for example. But a recent one I’ve come across sounds a lot like the 2000 film Dude, Where’s My Car? and it’s hilarious.

A recent article at Marijuana Moment explains that Biden’s lawyers are taking the judge hearing the case of US v. Harris on a wild ride around the law to get to a place where, they claim, prohibiting gun possession by weed users is constitutional.

They start by asserting that when the constitution was ratified, it was common practice to ban the mentally ill and those who can’t stay sober from possessing guns. Then they try to apply this to people who smoke ganja.

This is where “Dude, where’s my gun?” comes in. As the DOJ’s argument goes . . .

Users are unlikely to put their guns away before using drugs and retrieve them only after regaining lucidity. And it is unclear how the government could reasonably administer a regime that permitted confiscation only during the several-hour period a person is intoxicated.

As “evidence” of this, they point to the man who is attempting to overturn a prohibited possession conviction in the case. In the course of an evening, he got both high and drunk enough to lose track of his pistol.

This case is an example: [defendant Erik Matthew] Harris claimed to lose one of his firearms (potentially at a bar) on the same evening that he smoked marijuana and was drunk.

The filing, of course, made all sorts of other arguments, including that drug use often coincides with mental health problems, but they admit that correlation doesn’t mean causation, so that’s weak and beside the point. What’s even weaker is that they use a situation in which a person abused alcohol (something many people do) and attempt to use that impaired mental state against marijuana users.

The DOJ doesn’t see how they could possibly enforce the law only during the period marijuana users are high. They don’t, however, seem to see that kind of problem with alcohol. Many states have prohibitions against gun possession while legally drunk.

Hopefully the Third Circuit Court of Appeals judges involved in this case can see what a flimsy house of cards they’re dealing with here and don’t make some of the same mistakes that the hapless protagonists of the 2000 film made. It might be a good idea to prohibit possession while actually impaired, but a blanket prohibition on possession by anyone who ever uses marijuana makes as much sense as banning possession by people who like to have an occasional beer on the weekend.