One of the fun bits about Federalism is watching Democrats hate on it until they can’t stop tripping over each other to embrace it. A great recent example is illegal immigration. Arizona, feeling itself overrun by alien invaders, wanted to protect its citizens, but the Obama Administration got in the way. Immigration enforcement, the courts said, was solely under federal jurisdiction and oversight. Trump got elected, and they forgot all about that.
Federal money is also a right until the left needs to use it to strongarm states into compliance with federal mandates. Trump does it, and it is tyrannical overreach.
I think our readers will agree that most of what the feds do is unconstitutional, so this story should appeal.
“The US Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, has agreed to hear en banc the question of whether Congress has the constitutional authority to enact federal gun control laws.”
The only hook in the enumerated powers granted to the Federal government to regulate guns is the commerce clause. …
The case before the Fifth Circuit is a gun case by a convicted felon in possession of a firearm challenging the government’s authority granted in Wickard v. Filburn. If successful at both the appeals court (plausible) it would be immediately appealed to SCOTUS. Justice Thomas has said he thinks this approach to invalidating gun regulation has merit.
Wickard v. Filburn gives Congress significant regulatory overreach through the Commerce Clause, a power that wasn’t recognized (imagined is a better word) until 1948. It isn’t even 80 years old, so a country that’s 250 deserves an opportunity to reconsider that ruling in our current modern context.
Overturning Wickard is unlikely. It’s too much change for the likes of Roberts and Barrett. But this is a gun rights case, so it’s not impossible to imagine the High Court creating a few fissures that begin the process of draining the Commerce Clause swamp.
No breath holding, and you’ll want a Republican Administration if you want the government to offer any support. It would be revolutionary, seismic, and unlike anything any of us have seen in our lifetimes.
And you’d think the states would love it. Less pirating of its citizens, more responsibility, mobility, opportunity. Not so fast. Free states like free people have to compete. Value takes precedent. Blue states are already hemorrhaging populations, jobs, and wealth creation. Freed from any number of federal strings, we would see a handful of states already positioned to benefit and attract all the smart, rich people, leaving them with unfunded welfare states.
I live in a state poised to benefit, but I’m not clinging to any illusions. The best-case outcome is a disaster for the commies dressing themselves up as Democrats. Any such fight would be hard-won and hard kept.
But it makes me smile just thinking about it.
