Hunter Biden is finding out that his federal criminal trial in Delaware on gun charges makes for strange bedfellows: Supporters of gun rights are coming to his defense.
Jury began deliberations Monday in the trial involving President Joe Biden's son, who has been accused of unlawfully purchasing a revolver while using illicit drugs, and lying on federal forms about his drug use when he bought the weapon.
"It's easy to say, Well, screw Biden and we should throw the book at him," Eric Blandford, the Georgia state director for Gun Owners of America, told The Wall Street Journal. "Well, if they throw the book at the prince in every little way that they can, what are they going to do to you?"
Although gun-rights advocates view the president as one of the prime threats to the Second Amendment, they are standing behind his son on principle.
"Hunter Biden is innocent," C.J. Grisham, a Texas lawyer and an early leader in the movement to carry guns in public, told the Journal. "I think Hunter Biden is a despicable person and I definitely don't believe in his politics, but the fact of the matter is he is charged with a bogus crime."
John Crump, a writer at the pro-gun site AmmoLand, authored an op-ed titled "Hunter Biden: You Must Acquit, the Law's Not Legit." The article contended that barring illicit drug users from owning guns doesn't pass the test established by the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen requiring gun laws to be deeply rooted in historical precedent.
Since the Bruen decision in 2022, several courts, including an appeals court, have tossed cases against people accused of violating the drug-user gun ban, the Journal reported. Early laws made it a crime to carry a gun while intoxicated, but judges have cited the absence of historical measures that entirely stripped away the gun rights of Americans for such offenses.
"Show me a law going back to the days of the founding where someone wasn't allowed to own a gun because they were a user of some substance," Blandford told the Journal. "The people in the days of founding had access to opium; they had access to marijuana."
Gun-control groups that are fighting to keep the drug-user ban in place have been silent on Hunter Biden's case. A spokeswoman for Everytown for Gun Safety, the largest gun-control group in the country, told the Journal it hadn't issued any statements on the case, the Journal reported. President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak at Everytown's annual conference this week, she said.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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