The Limits of Nullification
By ROBERT A. LEVY, NYT
BILTMORE LAKE, N.C. — ON Sept. 11, anti-gun-control legislators in the Missouri General Assembly are likely to pass a bill, over the governor’s veto, that renders almost all federal gun laws void in the state, and even makes it a crime for federal agents to enforce them.
Missouri is only the latest state to push back against federal gun laws. In Montana, the Firearms Freedom Act, passed in 2009, purports to exempt any gun manufactured and kept within the state from federal regulations; despite a federal appellate court decision last month invalidating the statute, it has served as a model for new or pending laws in more than a half-dozen states.
But while states are not powerless in the face of federal law, there are limits to what they can do to prevent enforcement of constitutionally valid regulation.
The bills are based on the theory of nullification, which has its roots in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and holds that the federal government exists by the will of the states, and that states therefore have the right to decide which federal laws are constitutionally valid within their borders.
(More here.)
BILTMORE LAKE, N.C. — ON Sept. 11, anti-gun-control legislators in the Missouri General Assembly are likely to pass a bill, over the governor’s veto, that renders almost all federal gun laws void in the state, and even makes it a crime for federal agents to enforce them.
Missouri is only the latest state to push back against federal gun laws. In Montana, the Firearms Freedom Act, passed in 2009, purports to exempt any gun manufactured and kept within the state from federal regulations; despite a federal appellate court decision last month invalidating the statute, it has served as a model for new or pending laws in more than a half-dozen states.
But while states are not powerless in the face of federal law, there are limits to what they can do to prevent enforcement of constitutionally valid regulation.
The bills are based on the theory of nullification, which has its roots in the late 18th and early 19th centuries and holds that the federal government exists by the will of the states, and that states therefore have the right to decide which federal laws are constitutionally valid within their borders.
(More here.)
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