Mont. gun law challenges federal powers
A new Montana gun law puts the state at the forefront of a national bid to restore states’ rights by attacking up to a century of federal court decisions on Washington’s power.
Two other states – Alaska and Texas – have had favorable votes on laws similar to Montana’s, declaring that guns that stay within the state are none of the feds’ business. More than a dozen others are considering such laws, and more-general declarations of state sovereignty have been introduced this year in more than 30 legislatures.
The federal courts may not respond well to these laws in the short term, but backers who acknowledge this say that regardless, they intend for the laws to change the political landscape in the long term. They hope these state laws will undercut the legitimacy of contrary federal law – as has happened with medicinal marijuana – and even push federal courts to bend with the popular wind.
“What’s going on is that people all over the country have decided, ‘Enough is enough,’ ” said Kevin Gutzman, a professor at Western Connecticut State University and the author of “Who Killed the Constitution?” “This is supposed to be a federal system, but instead Congress seems to think it can legislate anything it wants.”
Harold
Hoo-raw for Montana, Texas and all the rest…ATF jurisdiction is limited to federal lands and territories not in the sovereign states of the united States of America. We as sovereign states can make our own gun laws as well as tobacco, and alcohol. However somewhere in the back of my mind is something called “The Buck Act”. Don’t know what that’s all about but somehow I think it fits in to all of this.