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Originally Posted by Al Norris
...All of these State laws are aimed at restricting the reach of Raich, in that the regulation of interstate commerce has gone too far when it explicitly interferes with a States police power...
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Al, I agree, and symbolically these laws contain a powerful political message.
But legally, the only way the reach of
Raich can be restricted is by the federal courts or by federal statutes limiting their preemptive effect. In effect either the federal courts will need to find bases upon which to retreat from their expansive application of the Commerce Clause, or Congress will need to decide that excessive encroachment on state prerogatives is bad public policy.
And of course there are tradeoffs, and we in the gun community have our own ambivalence. On one hand we complain about the expansion of the Commerce Clause and applaud state laws like this one in Wyoming purporting to restrict that expansion. On the other hand, in other contexts we rail at the confusion created by a hodgepodge of state gun laws.
And of course the 10th Amendment tension goes far beyond firearm laws. Do we want to see "states' rights" again surface as a justification for discrimination against blacks, Asians, Jews, or guys named Al or Frank?