Missouri Second Amendment Preservation Act Goes To Supreme Court
BY Herschel Smith
2 years, 8 months ago
Bidens (sic) DOJ doesn’t like the idea that the State of Missouri has decided to protect its citizens from an overreaching federal government and unconstitutional laws. HB85 also known as the Second Amendment Preservation Act or SAPA has really gotten under the skin of the Biden administration because it prevents gun-grabbers at the federal level from coercing with state officials for gun grabs. The law does not extend to various federal statutes, executive orders, administrative orders, court orders, rules, regulations, or other actions that collect data or restrict or prohibit the manufacture, ownership, or use of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition exclusively within the borders of Missouri.
The Federal government’s complaint alleges that the restrictions within HB85 have hindered cooperation and other activities that aid federal, state, and local law enforcement efforts in creating joint Federal Task Forces against Missourians.
The legislation, which was signed into law in 2021 and sponsored by Representative Jered Taylor, invalidates federal firearms laws. Under SAPA, law enforcement agencies can be fined up to $50,000 if they enforce federal gun regulations. You can imagine how infuriated the gun grabbers would be over something like this.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division said, “A state cannot simply declare federal laws invalid,” “This act makes enforcement of federal firearms laws difficult and strains the important law enforcement partnerships that help keep violent criminals off the street.”
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt said, “After their disastrous arguments in the Missouri Supreme Court last week, the Biden Department of Justice has now filed yet another partisan lawsuit that seeks to attack Missourians’ Second Amendment rights.”
This is not an especially well written article. Nonetheless, I told you that the FedGov hated this law. I told you so.
I think the thing about this the FedGov hates so much is that state, county and local LEOs can be sued for $50,000 and fired for cooperating with agents of the FedGov, and barred from ever working as a LEO again in the state of Missouri.
The reason they hate this is because they need local LEOs to assist in protection, addresses, processing, records (e.g., let’s say that FedGov wants to press other charges) and the like.
This continues the saga of he Missouri 2A preservation act.
I wouldn’t make a prediction on what the SCOTUS will do. What I do know is that if the state of Missouri is serious about this, it won’t matter and any SCOTUS decision will be ignored. The state doesn’t have to cooperate with the FedGov in anything. They could decide to arrest agents of the FedGov and thrown them in the state penitentiary if they so choose, and there’s nothing the FedGov could do about it.
On March 9, 2022 at 1:33 am, Hudson H Luce said:
It’s a Tenth Amendment kind of thing, too, FedGov wants to be able to commandeer state and local law enforcement to do its will. There’s case law on this – “It is incontestible that the Constitution established a system of “dual sovereignty.” Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 457 (1991); Tafflin v. Levitt, 493 U.S. 455, 458 (1990). Although the States surrendered many of their powers to the new Federal Government, they retained “a residuary and inviolable sovereignty,” The Federalist No. 39, at 245 (J. Madison). This is reflected throughout the Constitution’s text, Lane County v. Oregon, 7 Wall. 71, 76 (1869); Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 700, 725 (1869), including (to mention only a few examples) the prohibition on any involuntary reduction or combination of a State’s territory, Art. IV, §3; the Judicial Power Clause, Art. III, §2, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause, Art. IV, §2, which speak of the “Citizens” of the States; the amendment provision, Article V, which requires the votes of three fourths of the States to amend the Constitution; and the Guarantee Clause, Art. IV, §4, which “presupposes the continued existence of the states and . . . those means and instrumentalities which are the creation of their sovereign and reserved rights,” Helvering v. Gerhardt, 304 U.S. 405, 414-415 (1938). Residual state sovereignty was also implicit, of course, in the Constitution’s conferral upon Congress of not all governmental powers, but only discrete, enumerated ones, Art. I, §8, which implication was rendered express by the Tenth Amendment’s assertion that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
The Framers’ experience under the Articles of Confederation had persuaded them that using the States as the instruments of federal governance was both ineffectual and provocative of federal state conflict. See The Federalist No. 15. Preservation of the States as independent political entities being the price of union, and “[t]he practicality of making laws, with coercive sanctions, for the States as political bodies” having been, in Madison’s words, “exploded on all hands,” 2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 9 (M. Farrand ed. 1911), the Framers rejected the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the States, and instead designed a system in which the state and federal governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people–who were, in Hamilton’s words, “the only proper objects of government,” The Federalist No. 15, at 109. We have set forth the historical record in more detail elsewhere, see New York v. United States, 505 U. S., at 161-166, and need not repeat it here. It suffices to repeat the conclusion: “The Framers explicitly chose a Constitution that confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States.” Id., at 166. [n.10] The great innovation of this design was that-our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other”–“a legal system unprecedented in form and design, establishing two orders of government, each with its own direct relationship, its own privity, its own set of mutual rights and obligations to the people who sustain it and are governed by it.” U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 838 (1995) (Kennedy, J., concurring). The Constitution thus contemplates that a State’s government will represent and remain accountable to its own citizens. See New York, supra, at 168-169; United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 576-577 (1995) (Kennedy, J., concurring). Cf. Edgar v. MITE Corp., 457 U.S. 624, 644 (1982) (“the State has no legitimate interest in protecting nonresident[s]”). As Madison expressed it: “[T]he local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere.” The Federalist No. 39, at 245. [n.11]
This separation of the two spheres is one of the Constitution’s structural protections of liberty. “Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch, a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front.” Gregory, supra, at 458. To quote Madison once again:
“In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.” The Federalist No. 51, at 323.
See also The Federalist No. 28, at 180-181 (A. Hamilton). The power of the Federal Government would be augmented immeasurably if it were able to impress into its service–and at no cost to itself–the police officers of the 50 States. …” Scalia, C.J. in Printz v. United States (95-1478), 521 U.S. 898 (1997) at https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/95-1478.ZO.html
On March 9, 2022 at 8:59 am, Dan said:
I guarantee the SCOTUS will shoot down this law. The court has proven repeatedly that the power of the Fed Gov is infinitely more important than our rights.
On March 9, 2022 at 9:35 am, Chris said:
The FedGov is not so upset with California, and certain localities that have laws against local law agencies assisting the enforcement of Federal immigration laws. So this has little to do with Constitutional questions of local enforcement of Federal laws and all to do with liberal hatred of gun rights.
On March 9, 2022 at 9:56 am, J said:
Ref: Hudson Luce’s response. If any black-robed creature and/or officer of any US court were honest to their Constitutional oaths, this obvious (to everyone) illegal and oppressive DOJ action would have never made it past the first hurdle. I expect the same treatment by our esteemed Supreme Court Jesters.
But then, most laws, regulations, executive orders, and government departments have been extraconstitutional since the Marshall Court. It’s long past time for this house of cards to come tumbling down.
On March 9, 2022 at 3:02 pm, Mill Tone said:
Let’s not make a federal case out of it.
said about every kid I went to govrnment school with back in the nineteensixties.
Let’s hope that Missouri holds to the ideal.
Milton