Friday, May 01, 2009

The Governor of Montana Affirms States Rights

Armed and Safe is Giving credit where it's due: Montana's Governor Schweitzer does the right thing.

A similar bill, HB 1863, has been introduced here in Texas. HB 1863, a bill Relating to exempting the intrastate manufacture of a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition from federal regulation was considered in a public hearing on the 27th and was left in committee. If you would like to see this bill advanced, you need to contact the members of the Public Safety Committee and ask them to release this bill to Calendars.

It will be very interesting to see how the Feds react to Montana's new law.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

These types of bills are somewhat interesting, but there is a long standing legal precedent already in place that makes them pointless.

The original case is supreme court's ruling on Wickard vs Filburn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn), where it was decided that even though the extra acre of wheat crop that Filburn harvested could have been for his own intrastate use, that because it affected interstate commerce it was not protected from the Commerce Clause.

The same type of argument also failed in Gonzales vs Raich (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._Raich), which was the test of the "Medicinal Marijuana" laws. Same result; the intrastate product was found to impact interstate commerce and therefore could be regulated under the Commerce Clause.

The only insightful way I've heard of state's railing against the law, in marijuana's case, is that some states are no longer prosecuting marijuana drug users at the local or state level, saying in effect "if it's a Federal law, then let the Federal Gov enforce it." Unfortunately, the ATF are very active in firearms prosecution.