There are a lot of things I’m willing to tolerate from the government, even if I disagree with them, so long as there’s some sense of consistency involved. I don’t agree with lifetime bans on non-violent felons, but since they apply to all felons, there’s a sense of consistency there so I’m not exactly losing sleep over it.

I might feel different if I were a non-violent felon, admittedly, but still…

One example of inconsistency is medical marijuana.

The DEA looks the other way with both medical and recreational marijuana in the various states where each or both are legal. The last three presidents have said they weren’t going to crack down, and since the last president is also the next president, there’s no reason to expect that to change.

But if you own a gun, suddenly it’s a problem. It doesn’t even matter if it’s in a safe that you couldn’t open high if your life depended on it, you simply can’t own a gun while using medical marijuana under federal law, regardless of how the feds view marijuana still.

In an act of bipartisanship, Kentucky lawmakers proposed a resolution asking the feds for some common sense.

Kentucky lawmakers are pushing for a change to a federal law that makes it illegal for medical marijuana patients to own a gun.

Medical marijuana became legal in Kentucky on Jan. 1, making it the 38th state to legalize the substance for medical use. However, federal law still classifies marijuana as an illegal controlled substance. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, using marijuana — even for medical purposes — prohibits you from legally owning firearms.

Last week, Democratic Louisville Sen. David Yates and Republican Sen. Stephen West introduced a resolution urging Congress to amend the Gun Control Act to allow medical marijuana users to maintain their gun rights.

Yates said he knows people personally affected by the law, including a friend who was hesitant to obtain a medical marijuana card for fear of losing their gun rights.

…

The resolution will not directly change federal law, because that is up to congress. Instead, it calls on Kentucky’s federal lawmakers, like U.S. Senators Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, and Rep. Morgan McGarvey, to introduce legislation that would amend the Gun Control Act.

If anyone will, I suspect Sen. Rand Paul would. His libertarian leanings mesh with this request just a little too well for him to be opposed to such a thing.

This might be different if medical marijuana dispensaries were being hammered by the DEA on a regular basis. Then there would be some consistency in how the feds viewed the drug in the first place. Instead, what we see is the inconsistency of them acting as if the laws against it don’t matter at all, except when you also want to exercise your Second Amendment rights too. Then, there’s a big problem and no one at the federal level has said that there’s nothing to worry about in any way that provides actual protection to people.

My hope is that we’ll start to see some positive movement on this, because it should have happened years ago by now. It hasn’t, and that needs to change.