The gun-toting fanatics of Tennessee and Montana are leading a 21st Century rebellion. God I love ‘em.
My favorite correspondent reminded me about a grass-roots effort that is spreading across the nation. Because it involves:
- your right not to have the federal government manage every detail of your life;
- the right of your state and its citizens to determine how best to solve their problems and govern themselves;
- your right to keep and bear arms;
it is not receiving a lot of coverage in the mainstream media.
Here’s the story:
A lot of us can recite the Second Amendment to the US Constitution by heart:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
Fewer of us can recite the Tenth Amendment:
The 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.
And almost none of us can recite the so-called Commerce Clause (Article I, Section 8):
The Congress shall have power … To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes;
The Second Amendment is about guns, not duck hunting. Because our forebears knew that when the government has all the good guns, citizens are naught but prisoners, they made it clear that the “right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
Ever since then, the federal government has been battering away at the Second Amendment, as well as many of the other rights of citizens and states using the commerce clause as a maul. How? Well, since the commerce clause says “The Congress shall have power … to regulate commerce…among the several states,” the courts have been happy to let Congress regulate everything from guns to wheat to textbooks because all of them involve commerce among the states. Hence, the commerce clause applies. You should read the excellent brief story of the commerce clause at the Firearms Freedom Act web site.
So, the states of Tennessee and Montana reasoned that firearms made entirely in their respective states and sold only to citizens of those states are exempt from the commerce clause and, hence, ATF can go fuck themselves. Those two states have passed laws exempting fire fire arms produced in their states and sold to their citizens from federal meddling.
Montana House Bill 246, passed in October 2009 is short and very clear. Give it a read.
ATF is apoplectic over both the Montana and Tennessee laws. They currently are trying legal maneuvering to delay or deny court action on these laws since there’s every reason to believe that a court also would have to tell ATF to go fuck themselves if this matter ever got in front of a panel of judges who could read the Constitution.
Right now, ATF is writing threatening letters to holders of Federal Firearms Licenses (primarily gun dealers) in Tennessee and Montana.
So you don’t like guns. Why should you care about this? Because the commerce clause is the reason you can’t:
- buy a decent muscle car
- get children’s cotton pajamas made without allergenic fireproofing chemicals
- find decent fireworks
- ride on an airplane where you can have a cigarette with your drink
- smoke or grow marijuana even if it’s legal in your state (although the feds are beating a hasty retreat from this one because of the “medical marijuana” laws)
There’s a long list of laws the feds have enacted under the commerce clause. The above are merely suggestions to you that this is about a lot more than guns.
But, if guns are your thing, you’ll be interested to know that Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wyoming have all introduced similar bills. A dozen other states are considering similar laws.
Excellent material – Thanks for publishing that advice, I suspect that it basically answers my concern.