If Joe Biden’s attacks on Natural Rights -- and his promotion of government attacks on the particular right to keep and bear arms – are not obvious to most Americans, the new move by Biden’s so-called “Justice Department” ought to open a few more eyes.
Fully fueled on breakfasts, lunches, and dinners paid for by US taxpayers, the Biden Gang has hopped on their political ponies and ridden to Missouri, to file briefs opposing the implementation of the state’s recently-passed “Second Amendment Preservation Act.”
As James Murphy reports for The New American:
On Wednesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) weighed in on a Missouri court case challenging the state’s new Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA). The DOJ filed a statement of interest in the case in which the City of St. Louis, St. Louis County, and Jackson County are challenging the new law.
MRCTV readers likely know that Missouri’s conservatives and libertarians recently have worked hard to staunch the flow of gun rights being sucked out of the body politic. In June, Governor Mike Parsons (R) signed the SAPA bill, which will go into effect on August 28, and which stands out among other “2A protection acts” for not only preventing state or local police from enforcing future federal gun laws or collecting increased federal gun/ammo taxes, but blocks those police from enforcing ANY such orders, actually removing sovereign immunity from police who do side with the feds.
As the legislative overview reports:
This act declares as invalid all federal laws that infringe on the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and Article I, Section 23 of the Missouri Constitution. Some laws declared invalid under this act include certain taxes, certain registration and tracking laws, certain prohibitions on the possession, ownership, use, or transfer of a specific type of firearm, and confiscation orders as provided in the act.
The act declares that it is the duty of the courts and law enforcement agencies to protect the rights of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.
Under this act, no public officer or state or local employee has the authority to enforce firearms laws declared invalid by the act. However, state employees may accept aid from federal officials in an effort to enforce Missouri laws. Sovereign immunity shall not be an affirmative defense under this act.
As supporters of rights will recognize, the Missouri statute is not only incomplete, and it not only allows the state employees to accept unconstitutional federal cash, it should not even be necessary, because the Second Amendment prohibits any level of government from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms.
Needless to say, however, even this move by the pro-rights folks in Missouri has sent the Bidenistas into a frenzy.
The DOJ claimed that the new law will undermine current law enforcement efforts in Missouri, ‘including valuable partnerships federal agencies have developed with state and local jurisdictions.’
The DOJ went on to complain that the new law has already led to some Missouri law-enforcement agencies announcing that they would no longer submit data into the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN).
In other words, the Missouri statute will prevent the feds from operating in those unconstitutional ways.
And, amazingly, the Biden DOJ attempted to cite the Constitution in its anti-constitution, anti-rights argument to block the statute. In their brief, the Biden Gang actually referred to the so-called “Supremacy Clause” that leftists (who, in the US, never have, on the whole, supported smaller government, rights, or federalism) often misread as to mean that the feds can make up any law and have it not only rule supreme over the states, but also supersede clearly delineated rules and restrictions in the Constitution itself.
Found in Article VI, Paragraph 2 of the Constitution, the “Supremacy Clause” reads:
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
Thus, as Murphy notes:
The operative words are ‘in pursuance thereof.’ Laws or regulations infringing on the right to keep and bear arms, which violates the Constitution’s Second Amendment, are clearly not made in pursuance of the Constitution. States have a right — even a duty — to nullify federal measures that are unconstitutional, as many (if not most) federal gun laws are. The Missouri law is an attempt to let the federal government know that further infringements upon the Second Amendment will not be tolerated in the state.
The Supremacy Clause does not say that ANY federal law is supreme. It says that the Constitution and laws made pursuant to it are supreme. Under the Constitution, state governments are required to NOT abide by unconstitutional federal statutes (hint: ALL federal gun/ammo statutes).
As Thomas E. Woods, Jr. notes in his book, “33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask”:
(A) nullifying state does not deny the principle that the Constitution and laws made in pursuance thereof are the supreme law of the land. On the contrary, it defends the principle, as it disputes whether the law in question is itself pursuant to the Constitution in the first place. (p. 206)
That is why Thomas Jefferson wrote the Kentucky Resolutions in 1798, and in them, among many other important points about federalism, the Constitution, Natural Rights, enumerated powers, and nullification, he observed:
“(I)f those who administer the general government be permitted to transgress the limits fixed by that compact, by a total disregard to the special delegations of power therein contained, annihilation of the state governments, and the erection upon their ruins, of a general consolidated government, will be the inevitable consequence…”
Constitutionalists are in an important fight in Missouri and elsewhere. MO Governor Parsons recently pardoned the St. Louis couple who wielded guns to defend their home from invasive, property-damaging trespassers last year.
There can be no question as to who is the aggressive enemy and who is defending the right to self-determination and life.
Joe Biden is not in the latter category, and neither is his Department of Justice gang.
Related: VA County Sheriff Vows To Deputize Thousands of Citizens To Fight Potential State Gun Grabs