In the courts.

[russ1943]

Feds fight back on Montana made guns lawsuit
By MATT GOURAS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, January 21, 2010
(01-21) 14:12 PST Helena, Mont. (AP) --
Montana doesn't have the authority to exempt itself from national gun control laws, the federal government argued in new court filings, hoping to beat back a movement from states adopting the Firearms Freedom Act.
The Department of Justice, in a brief filed this week in U.S. District Court in Missoula, said that federal gun control is a "valid exercise of Congress' commerce power under the Constitution."..................
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"The first import of this response is that the legal game is now on," said Gary Marbut of the Montana Shooting Sports Association.
Tennessee adopted a clone of the Montana act, which has been proposed in many other states.
The Justice Department argued in its brief that the state act is pre-empted by federal gun control. It also said the advocates don't have standing to bring the lawsuit.
The brief said the 1934 National Firearms Act was first put in place to regulate guns that could be "used readily and efficiently by criminals or gangsters."
Congress followed it in 1968 with a gun control act aimed at decreasing serious crime, and further strengthened its control over interstate commerce, the brief points out.
Those laws and others all mean to keep tabs on guns that easily pass between state borders, the Justice Department argued.
"To achieve this goal, Congress put in place a comprehensive scheme to regulate the movement of firearms in commerce," the government lawyers wrote in their brief.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

1. Governments rarely, if ever, rescind power they have been delegated, taken, or bestowed themselves.

I'm a big fan of states-rights - hopefully the states win out this time.

[SteveM]

2. The "commerce clause" has a rather thin backbone...

on which to place various Federal regulatory schemes. While the Raich case in 2005 seems to give Congress the power to regulate (continue outlawing) marijuana because its sale and possession may affect interstate trafficking in the substance (even if it is illegal!), the 1995 Lopez case seems much more reasonable when the Supremes said the clause could not be used to pump up a sentence on a convicted drug trafficker because he was too close to a school.

Very thin indeed -- and these latest cases seem to center on the clause's use to prop up a disastrous War on Drugs, Inc.

[GreenStormCloud]

3. A win by the states - unlikely - could be a MAJOR legal tsunami in other areas.

Many federal laws could suddenly become vunerable.