The state efforts are about sovereignty and the 10th Amendment versus the commerce clause. Guns just happen to be the vehicle for that fight. The same state efforts could target homemade jelly and jam rather than guns, but would get little publicity or legal reaction from the federal government. Guns are attention-getting, heavily regulated, and guarantee a legal reaction by the federal government
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In essence, Congress can justify anything it wants via the commerce clause if the courts do not limit the reach of their arguments.
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Absolutely correct. Most commerce clause cases deal with the production and sale (or lack thereof) of products and their impact on commerce. The
Gun Free School Zone of 1996 took the commerce clause to a new level of tenuous connections to commerce.
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(F) the occurrence of violent crime in school zones has resulted in a decline in the quality of education in our country;
(G) this decline in the quality of education has an adverse impact on interstate commerce and the foreign commerce of the United States;
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The mere existence of a product (the manufacturing, sale, and ownership of which is already heavily regulated) contributes to an environment that impairs the quality of education, which impairs the country's economic productivity. Using that type of logic, the federal government could regulate entertainment activities (dumbing down the population), food (bad food = poor students), or essentially anything.