The Justice Department is right to challenge Missouri’s absurd gun law

The Justice Department is right to challenge Missouri’s absurd gun law

Paul Waldman — Read time: 3 minutes

Columnist

From the beginning of our history, there has been a tug of war between federal and state power — and between states and localities, and between the federal government and localities. These different levels of government can have different priorities and philosophies that come into conflict. For instance, when Democrats control Washington, but a particular state is controlled by conservative Republicans, and within that state are cities controlled by liberal Democrats, there will be fights over who’s in charge and whose word is law.

The result is showdowns like the one now taking place over one of the most extreme pro-gun laws in America, one that went into effect in Missouri last year. The Justice Department has filed suit against the Missouri law, charging that it violates the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which provides that federal laws take precedence over state laws when the two are in conflict.

There are some complicated legal and constitutional issues at play here, but the Missouri law, called the “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” is utterly bonkers. It reads like the work of a far-right extremist typing away in his backwoods shack between militia training maneuvers and printing his own money.

The law declares that “If the federal government assumes powers that the people did not grant it in the Constitution of the United States, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.” It then says broad swaths of federal law on guns “shall be invalid to this state, shall not be recognized by this state, shall be specifically rejected by this state, and shall not be enforced by this state.”

It allows anyone who thinks a Missouri law enforcement officer has infringed their Second Amendment rights to sue. You don’t even have to be the supposedly injured party: “Any person residing or conducting business in a jurisdiction who believes” a law enforcement officer has worked with the federal government to enforce certain federal gun laws could file suit and get attorney’s fees paid. It also penalizes any Missouri law enforcement agency that cooperates with federal officials with a fine of $50,000 for every employee of that agency.

The context here is that in recent years, Missouri Republicans have decided no pro-gun law is too crazy to entertain. One bill that would change the way the law treats self-defense claims has been termed the “Make Murder Legal Act” by prosecutors and police. After the state repealed its law requiring permits to purchase guns, firearm homicides and suicides rose significantly. But for these Republicans, as elsewhere, the solution to people getting killed with guns is always more guns.

But back to this lawsuit. Conservatives are going to say: Isn’t this just like “sanctuary city” laws? You liberals love those, so aren’t you being hypocritical?

There’s some overlap in the two cases, but the key difference is that sanctuary city laws tend to withdraw local officials from participating in the enforcement of immigration laws, which are the federal government’s purview. If there are any sanctuary city laws that attempt to declare all federal immigration law “invalid” — and allow you to sue if a local official gives “material support” to a federal officer — I haven’t heard of them.

There are times when the differing agendas of local and state governments result in something between a standoff and a stand-down. That’s the situation today with marijuana, which is illegal at the federal level but legal in an increasing number of states. The federal government has essentially decided to step back and let states do what they want; the FBI isn’t raiding legitimate marijuana businesses operating with state licenses.

But the Missouri gun law is an entirely different beast. It’s so extreme not only in its results but in its explicit language that the Justice Department really had no choice but to file suit. If one state can simply declare federal laws “invalid” because it doesn’t like them, then the result could be a complete breakdown of the constitutional order.

But maybe that’s part of the point.