Hunter Biden arrives to federal court on June 6, 2024.Matt Slocum/AP
On Tuesday, a federal jury in Delaware convicted Hunter Biden of three felonies related to federal gun crimes. In 2018, while in recovery, the now-president’s son wrote on paperwork for a gun purchase that he did not abuse illegal drugs. President Joe Biden said last week that he would not pardon his son if he was convicted.
During the trial, Biden’s former romantic partners spoke about his struggles with crack cocaine addiction. His daughter also said she could not vouch for his sobriety at the time he purchased a firearm. Biden’s defense attorney argued that Biden did not lie when he said he was not abusing illegal substances, as he was sober and recovering at the time. The jurors, it appears, were not convinced by those assertions.
The defense attorney’s arguments do bring up a contentious issue: When can someone struggling with addiction or past institutionalization for mental health be considered safe enough to purchase a firearm? Mental health professionals can play a role in these decisions, but as psychiatrist Dr. Paul Appelbaum told me recently, that determination can be complicated:
When you’ve got a process for restoring gun rights, at some point down the road, these will frequently involve evaluation by a psychiatrist or another mental health professional to assess the extent to which an individual remains sufficiently dangerous to themselves, or to other people, that it would be unwise to restore their gun rights.
There are no good assessments of approaches that provide certainty with regard to a person’s likelihood of using a gun in an inappropriate way in the future, so mental health professionals are often in a difficult situation.
Hunter Biden faces another federal trial later this year on unrelated tax fraud charges.
