The Citizens United decision is mine.
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“Corporations are People (without the ‘people’ political donation limit).” What could go wrong?
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Meh…it pales in comparison to Filburn’s, which basically said a guy growing wheat on his own property for his own farm’s use and family’s consumption was subject to regulation by the federal gubmint.
Also, bring up Citizens United might trigger some folks so be careful referring to it.
Oh…too late:
You clearly misunderstand the case and its ruling.
While I’d very much like most NFA items - suppressors, SBRs, SBSs, AOWs - to cease being regulated as such given that their use in crime is vanishigly rare, I very much doubt that this law will survive contact with the judicial branch for the various reasons I’ve mentioned and that there will be a bad outcome for whomever volunteers to be the test case.
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Does that imply there will be a lot of shooting going on?
Hey thanks for the condescension, my reservoir was getting close to empty.
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I believe this bill was made mainly to go to the Supreme Court to challenge suppressors being an NFA item. If that works, it will be a great thing. I would be careful come 9/1 though
I’m sure one’s state legislator(s) will come through in one’s defense if one suffers the consequences of violating the Federal statute(s) now that Texas has declared the supremacy clause invalid. Right?
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Suspect it’s a bit more roundabout - testing the interstate commerce clause and the ability for the feds to mind intrastate commerce since it’s not attempting to do anything about the NFA as national law. If successful suppressors will remain NFA items, but suppressors produced under the TX law that remain in TX will not be NFA items. In fact the BATFE might be so churlish as to go through maximum process for any subsequent dealings they have with those known to possesses non-NFA “Made in Texas” suppressors.
Short of a sea change in the judiciary, I do not believe this law will survive litigation. I would be very surprised if the SCOTUS opts to hear it.
I would not act any differently come 1 September than I did previously regarding the NFA.
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Well me neither
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Interstate Commerce is the Federal Government’s catch all for jurisdiction. It doesn’t matter how independent and not involved in commerce you are, the feds will always lean in on interstates commerce. There are multiple land mark cases that use it. Most for bad, even the cases targeting racists.
Watch the justice system, I’d suggest Viva Barnes Law. They commonly cover the cases defining the current roles of the judicial system in our lives. While they lean conservative, it doesn’t change the info being shared. They do a good job of showing the fluidity of judicial system and where abuses are allowed and where they can be challenged. Warning, it is mostly bad news as politics are the most common reasoning observed, rather than morality, damages, or even the letter of the law.
Personally, I’m glad the states are spending tax dollars challenging the federal government. We have watched the federal government trample the balance of power in the country under both Republican and Democrat leadership for many years. Impowered states are the result of impowered people.
They should devise more inventive strategies than simply hoping for a friendlier bench to hear the same tired challenges to the ICC that have been rejected before. Kansas had a Second Amendment Protection Act enacted more recently than the Montana law - in 2019 the SOCTUS declined to hear what is presumably the test case.
I’d have to agree with Erik here; that’s money that could have gone to a school or other needed programs, for an argument that’s been tried repeatedly and failed. They’re not actually doing this to challenge the federal government at this point, they’re doing it for political points amongst part of the voting base even if they know it won’t succeed.
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It’s the perfunctory utility of it that really annoys - there isn’t even a novel argument at play. And given how recent that the KS case was, the bench hasn’t cycled to the point that this is so much as asking the other parent - you asked Dad last week and this week you think Dad will giver you a different answer to the same question under the same circumstances.
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@nick It’s Ironic, as I was going to post here to make the same point, with marijuana as the example.
At best, a case won’t appear in state court, but it can very easily be tried in a circuit/federal court.
That is a pretty risky bet. Your asking a politician to spend money on something that may or may not actually turn intro votes.
While you may look at the federal government as dad, the states do not. Nor should the people.
Political points today are the laws of tomorrow. The will of the people can sway this country. We watched the media and democratic party blame all gun violence on gun ownership. That narrative has played loudly for years. Yet, as actual unrest has developed in the country and the politics have gone extreme. What has changed? The answer is gun ownership. It has sky rocketed among nearly all political groups. I was at a gun show last Saturday and saw the most diverse group of people I’ve seen in any place. The 2nd amendment has gone from a far right issue to an everyone issue.
So when will it show up in the federal government as a top ticket issue on both sides? I can’t give you the day. But, I am noticing the waves forming in not only Texas, but across the country.
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1 – I disagree 2A has generally been a “far right” issue until the recent past…my experience and observation has been that 2A has always had good, broad support from center-left to far-right, although definitely increasing in percentage as one moves further to the right on the political continuum.
2 – It will be interesting to see where this particular issue re: silencers goes. My take: it won’t survive federal/SCOTUS scrutiny, if for no other reason than it is an uphill climb to expect silencers to be considered as “arms” as the framers understood them. There’s also the doctrine of Chevron Deference to overcome. I can see SCOTUS maybe finally ruling that silencers are protected under 2A, for example as bullets would be. But I definitely would not bet any significant amount of money on it.
3 – I’ll also note it’s ironic/amazing how often, if not always, that ideological governance and policies divorced from facts and reality seem to backfire…case-in-point: the aforementioned massive recent stampede of people to gun stores and shows to purchase a gun in response to the unprecedented increase in almost all forms of crime, in particular violent crime, following the “defund the police”, bail “reform”, district attorneys’ failure to prosecute crimes, and other similar dipshittery pushed upon citizens in democrat run cities and states. As pointed out above, the primary outcome, besides the death and suffering resulting from such policies, is a whole new broad, probably extremely durable, base of support for 2A rights.
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The analogy is that of asking the same question of the same venue in quick succession and expecting a different response. A more condescending version would be that saw about the definition of insanity.
So build the consensus to modify or repeal the NFA in Congress. First go-round in 2017 was better times for such legislation.
There’s definitely been a shift in the last ~year or so. Whether it’s a durable shift and the issue is decoupled from binary left-right packaging it’s too early to say. What’s apparent to me is that the willingness of political partisans to associate with those whom they have any significant disagreements with is at a low point.
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