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When the public hears about a state passing a new gun law, many Americans probably assume it refers to Democrats in a blue state taking steps to prevent gun violence. In 2021, however, it was Missouri Republicans who approved a rather extraordinary gun law, that the Justice Department considered wildly unconstitutional.
Yesterday, as The New York Times reported, a judge agreed with federal law enforcement over GOP officials in the Show Me State.
A federal judge in Kansas City on Tuesday struck down a Missouri law that restricted local and state law enforcement agencies in carrying out federal gun laws, ruling that the statute violated the Constitution and posed a grave threat to public safety. Judge Brian C. Wimes of the Western District of Missouri ruled that the Second Amendment Protection Act, passed in 2021 by the Republican-controlled state legislature, represented a blatant attempt to illegally usurp the federal government’s constitutional right to enforce federal laws without state interference.
In case anyone needs a refresher, let’s revisit our earlier coverage and review how we arrived at this point, because I’ve long believed there’s a larger significance to this case.
It was a couple of years ago when Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Parson, appeared at a gun store to sign a bill designed to discourage enforcement of federal gun laws. In fact, the state measure empowered private citizens to sue local police departments for $50,000 for incidents in which the police enforced laws that allegedly infringed on the Second Amendment.
The same GOP law said the state wouldn’t enforce federal gun laws that exceed state gun laws.
If you’re thinking, “Wait, states can’t do that,” then you agree with the Justice Department, which filed a lawsuit that made an important argument: States can’t declare “invalid” federal gun regulations they don’t like.
“This act impedes criminal law enforcement operations in Missouri,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a written statement last year. “The United States will work to ensure that our state and local law enforcement partners are not penalized for doing their jobs to keep our communities safe.”
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division added, “A state cannot simply declare federal laws invalid.”
To be sure, Missouri didn’t create an actual constitutional crisis: As even proponents of the policy in Missouri conceded, there are few real differences, at least right now, between state and federal gun laws.
What Missouri Republicans were apparently concerned about was federal gun policies that may exist in the future. It’s those hypothetical laws that GOP policymakers were eager to ignore, Constitutional Law 101 notwithstanding.
The underlying argument is generally known as “nullification”: It’s an idea that states can simply nullify national laws that states don’t like and don’t want to follow. For many years, the idea was espoused by opponents of federal anti-slavery laws and civil rights statutes.
Indeed, there was a rather spirited debate in the mid-19th century over whether states could choose to ignore federal laws, and the dispute was resolved by the U.S. Civil War.
Nullification advocates lost.
Yesterday, Missouri Republicans lost, too.
“While purporting to protect citizens, [the Second Amendment Protection Act] exposes citizens to greater harm by interfering with the federal government’s ability to enforce lawfully enacted firearms regulations designed by Congress for the purpose of protecting citizens,” the judge wrote in his ruling.
State officials have vowed to appeal to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, where Republican-appointed jurists have a large majority. Watch this space.
This post revises our related earlier coverage.