After the NRA’s wildly successful lobbying to turn the Second Amendment into an absolute individual right was emboldened by the Bruen decision, several states have been toeing the line to determine what prohibitions, if any, stand in the way of gun ownership. One of them, Missouri, passed a law that put a chilling effect on state and local law enforcement from enforcing federal gun laws in Missouri. The Show Me State just got shown that it can’t do that. Not for now, anyway. …
The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution is like the Commerce Clause and the Insurrection Clause in some ways — they are some of the threads that bind together an otherwise mostly independent series of states. And as neat as it is to think of the states as individual laboratories of democracy, there has to be some overlapping and enforceable code of conduct that can separate otherwise good science from a bumbling series of OSHA violations in a lab coat. …
As expected, Missouri has already announced that it will appeal the decision. …
Sure would be nice if some Missouri representatives were more committed to defending Missourians’ fundamental right to live. Missouri has the fourth highest gun death rate in the nation, due at least in part to the vigorous defense of the Second Amendment by representatives like [Attorney General Andrew] Bailey. As easy as it is to view this as a concrete example of the tension between state rights and federal authority, let’s not forget about the real consequences we have to stomach in the process.
— Chris Williams in As It Turns Out, You Can’t Just Nope Out of Listening to the Federal Government’s Laws on Guns
