“Will you accept the jury’s outcome,” ABC’s  David Muir asked US president Joe Biden concerning his son Hunter’s trial on federal gun charges, “their verdict, no matter what it is?”

Biden: “Yes.”

Muir: “And have your ruled out a pardon for your son?”

Biden: “Yes.”

The younger Biden faces up to 25 years in prison for allegedly making false statements (to the effect that he wasn’t a drug user)  while filling out a form to purchase a gun, and possessing the gun while being a drug user.

Biden SHOULD pardon his son — not out of fatherly love, but because the charges are both inherently evil and clearly and unambiguously unconstitutional.

Last things first:

The US Constitution declares itself “the supreme law of the land,” and according to its Second Amendment, “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” See that period at the end there? There are no added exceptions for drug users, or for anyone else. And as Chief Justice John Marshall pointed out in Marbury v. Madison, “an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.”

As a matter of law, prosecutors should never have brought these particular charges against Hunter Biden. As a matter of law, the judge in the trial should have dismissed them the instant they were brought. And as a matter of practical deterrence, the judge should have sanctioned the prosecutors, up to and including seeking their disbarment, for bringing them. Hunter Biden may well be guilty of real crimes, but these aren’t real crimes whether the charges accurately describe his actions or not.

On the moral side:

Whether Hunter Biden used drugs and whether Hunter Biden owned a gun were never any of the US government’s business.

The right to smoke, snort, inject, or otherwise ingest any substance one pleases is a natural human right that exists independently of, and supersedes, government edict.

The right to acquire and possess arms — of any kind — is likewise a natural human right that exists independently of, and supersedes, government edict.

All people had those rights before the Constitution was ratified, and all people will still have those rights after the Constitution and the government claiming that Constitution as the basis for its power, have disappeared.

Those rights belong to you. They belong to me. They belong to Hunter Biden. And they belong to the hundreds of thousands of Americans currently incarcerated for exercising those rights.

If you commit a real crime while under the influence of drugs, you’re responsible for that crime.

If you commit a real crime using a firearm, you’re responsible for that crime.

But neither using drugs, nor possessing a firearm, the two in combination, are real crimes. They’re fake “crimes” manufactured by politicians. Ditto the “crime” of lying to those politicians by way of exercising your rights without their permission.

Biden should break out his pardon pen for his son — and for all the other prisoners of the US governments wars on drugs and guns.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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