The Firearms Freedom Act movement has been at the forefront of the Tenth Amendment Movement for some time now. Good to see Gary Marbut – author of the original bill that first passed in Montana, then 7 other states, get some mainstream media coverage. From the Wall Street Journal:
Gary Marbut, 65, lives alone outside Missoula, in a solar-powered geodesic dome he built from a kit, on the remnant of a cattle ranch his family once owned and this is where the fight for state right’s for intrastate commerce will take place.
Ten state attorneys general, dozens of elected officials and an array of conservative groups are backing the legal challenge he engineered to get his constitutional theory before the Supreme Court. A federal appeals court in San Francisco is now considering his case.
“This is really about states’ rights and federal power rather than gun control,” Mr. Marbut says. There is “an emerging awareness by the people of America that the federal government has gone too far,” he maintains, “and it’s dependent on a really weird interpretation.”
He is talking about the 1942 Supreme Court case of Wickard v. Filburn, The question in 1942 was whether the federal government could regulate wheat a farmer grew for use on his own farm. But the constitutional issue concerned how far Congress’s authority to oversee interstate commerce stretched.
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- Will the Tenth Amendment shoot down Commerce Clause Abuse? - July 16, 2011
- My letter to the TSA. And their response - June 29, 2011