If there is one thing I can’t stand it is message bills that are low on policy and high on grandstanding.
This is where I direct you to Senator Margaret Dayton’s (R – Orem – District 15) SB 11 – Utah State-Made Firearms Protection.
This bill does some rather interesting things. On the bland side, it requires that guns made in Utah have a “Made in Utah” printed somewhere on the gun – ok, whatever, but on the flip side, this bill flies in the face of the Commerce Clause of the United States Constitution.
You see, the bill says that, if you make and sell a handgun in Utah to a citizen of Utah, you don’t have to register the transaction in accordance with federal law or regulations – laws and regulations that have authority granted to them by the Constitution.
Now you may or may not have heard of the the Constitution. Well it is the supreme law of the land and no law, be it federal, state, or local, is above the Constitution – it is a basic concept, really, we can’t be having crazy legislators making laws saying that the federal government is stupid…I mean, to do so would basically be saying you don’t support the republic.
Oh, hi Senator Dayton, did I say that one out loud?
You see, I suspect Dayton wants this bill, not so much to make Utah firearms a “Utah Original” but rather to directly challenge federal gun laws in an attempt to overturn various firearms bans that she just so happens not to like.
Bills that fly in the face of the state or national Constitution have what are called “Legislative Review Notes” so that legislators don’t just blindly vote for a bill without knowing the legal repercussions. The note on this one is quite clear that the Utah would be challenged and most likely loose in court if it were to pass this bill. What it doesn’t say is that you and I are paying for this little message bill in the mean time; that we are paying for while we have an unprecedented budget crisis that will result in more potholes on our streets and leaky roofs in our schools.
One would hope that people love the Constitution more than just the Second Amendment to the Constitution and understand why this is a bad bill. If you don’t like the current gun situation, there are far more cost effective routes to fix things…live voting. I dunno, I am just saying.
This bill is a load of crap – Dayton is just wasting tax dollars and state employee’s time.
A few typos…”Now you may or may not have heard of the the Constitution it is the supreme law of the land and that no law…”
Deb –
Thanks for the heads up!
Sadly, I have yet to find an editor who will work for a bucket of fish-heads and the occasional Diet Coke, so I frantically type in an effort to get my point across and often screw up.
Thanks for reading!
Well, the idea here is that if the gun is manufactured and sold within the state of Utah, it does not fall under the Insterstate Commerce Clause, as the gun has not been transported or sold across state lines. It is modeled after similar legislation that was passed in Montana. There are several other states with pending legislation of the same type; sort of a “shot across the bow” of the Federal Government, over control that many people believe are issues that should be left up to the individual states.
You don’t need to agree with it, but it is more helpful to come up with arguments against it, that point out why you believe the bill is bad, as opposed to comments simply calling the bill “a load of crap.” Such statements fail to educate as to why SB 11 should not be passed. Below is a website that discusses the history of the Interstate Commerce Clause. Read it through, and it may help you explain your position more concisely.
http://www.answers.com/topic/commerce-clause
“Positive federal use of the clause grew rapidly from the 1890s on. The Sherman Antitrust Act (1890) found constitutional justification in the clause, as it seemed to afford broad federal authority to prohibit combinations in restraint of trade and general market monopolization. The Court, however, relying on a distinction between production and distribution, held the statute inapplicable to a sugar monopoly that had acquired nearly complete control over the manufacture of refined sugar (United States v. E. C. Knight Company [1895]). “Commerce succeeds to manufacture, and is not part of it,” stated Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller: “Commerce among the states does not begin until goods commence their final movement from the state of their origin to that of their destination.” Over the next forty years, the Court applied the same restrictive principle to the control of mining, fishing, farming, oil production, and the generation of hydroelectric power. Similarly, the Court, in E. C. Knight, evolved another restrictive formula, the “direct effect” doctrine, which again ensured legal limits on federal use of the clause: only if a local activity directly affected interstate commerce was federal control valid.”
Cheers!
The original 13 states created the federal government and gave to it specific, enumerated authority to do certain things, as specified in the Constitution. To say that federal law is superior to state law denies the vital concept of dual sovereignty explained most recently by Justice Scalia in Printz vs. United States, 521 US 898 (1997). State law is supreme within the boundaries of the state.
Show me a state law that conflicts with a federal law in a domestic (state) matter, and I will show you a federal government whose size and reach have exceeded the bounds delineated in the Constitution.
In other words, federal law prevails only in those few matters delegated to the federal government in Article I Section 8 of the Constitution. But state law prevails (reigns supreme) in ALL OTHER MATTERS, especially domestic matters.
And the sooner the FEDs realize this, the better.
Oh, that you didn’t type so fast to get your point across. Perhaps, you could take more time to reflect upon what you are about to write, in order not to screw up. If a person can combine sarcasm and substance, it can make for a highly readable and powerful argument. When the substance is lacking, sarcasm presents itself as puerile. Nevertheless, folie a deux validation may give false impression of profundity. Such may be the instance based on the comment of Anon to the Curtis rant.
Some points of the blog are true. There is a document called the Constitution of the United States. There is a section of that document, Article I, Sections 8 & 10 that colloquially are called “the Commerce Clause”. However, the interpretation asserted by Curtis misses the mark by much for the target intended by those Founding Fathers when they wrote the Constitution. Therefore, Curtis’s statement “in accordance with federal law or regulations – laws and regulations that have authority granted to them by the Constitution” is arguably false. The argumentative falsehood of the statement is at the heart of SB-11.
A concise example of how committing a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy can lead to a conclusion of diminished reasoning on the part of the author can be found in Curtis’s sarcastic sniping at Senator Margaret Dayton (R – Orem – District 15), when she writes, “Well it is the supreme law of the land and no law, be it federal, state, or local, is above the Constitution – it is a basic concept, really, we can’t be having crazy legislators making laws saying that the federal government is stupid…I mean, to do so would basically be saying you don’t support the republic.”
To be charitable, Curtis probably wandered inadvertently into a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy because Curtis stands in awe of perceived authority, while the Founding Fathers stood in contempt for arbitrary authority that results in tyranny.
Curtis would do well to take heed, as Senator Margaret Dayton (R – Orem – District 15) has of the Tenth Amendment of said constitution. To the extent that Curtis believes that elected officials should defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and DOMESTIC, she should support and applaud, Dayton, for fulfilling her oath of office.
To the extent that Curtis believes that ” no law, be it federal, state, or local, is above the Constitution”, Curtis should stand with Dayton against the perversion of Justice O.W. Holmes, Jr. who introduced the concept of the “living and evolving constitution” into the lexicon. That one justice, on the bench of the Supreme Court longer than anyone else, by dint of genes, not scholarship, has done more harm to the Republic than any gaggle of legislatures over the entire history of the Nation.
Circa the re-assertion of Socialism-Progressivism following the Haymarket Massacre of 1886, the Interstate Commerce Act was legislated, as a populist punishment of the railroads. Nevertheless, there was contention whether the “Commerce Clause” was sufficiently broad in its authority to Congress to serve the expedient ends of 19th Century demagogues. From the time of the Holmes Court until the U.S. Vs. Lopez (1995) ruling, Constitutional rights and powers inalienable to the people and the States have been progressively usurped by a Federal government emboldened in 1942, by a little known U.S. Supreme ruling in Wickard vs. Filburn.
SB-11 solely deals with the manufacture, sale, carrying, use of firearms within the State of Utah. It does not address interstate commerce, except by tortuous logic the Supreme Court is coming to grips that the U.S. Constitution prohibits.
Justice Clarence Thomas argued, in U.S. vs Lopez, that allowing Congress to regulate intrastate, noncommercial activity under the Commerce Clause would confer on Congress a general “police power” over the entire nation. The Bill of Rights, also part of that Constitution, was specifically appended to the original document to prohibit such broad police powers.
The Lopez decision was clarified in United States v. Morrison 529 U.S. 598 (2000), in which the Supreme Court invalidated § 40302 of the Violence Against Women Act.
Indeed, as James Madison, the father of our Constitution, explained, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
Curtis abetted by the pernicious Holmes would perpetuate the inversion of the State-Federal relationship, a prostituted relationship given the cosmetic glow of legitimacy by exercise and entanglement in precedents.
James Madison, the father of our Constitution wrote that Americans must “take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties” and that “The freemen of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle.”
Rather than sneer, I ask Curtis to stand shoulder to shoulder with Senator Dayton and all patriots who are trying to mount a counter-revolution against a coup d’etat on the Republic through purposeful misinterpretation, specifically the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, by the Progressives.
blah blah blah
notice all my misspelling and punctuation. that is because i am sick and tired of grown people typing up their opinions trying to sound so smart and knocking the guy above their post. does spelling or grammar or sarcasm have anything to do with any of this? didn’t think so so why don’t you stop trying to impress the rest of us and just be satisfied that you think your so great and smart.
now all this basically comes down to is what most of you already have agreed on, the founding fathers who wrote the constitution. yes they did write this a long time ago with a great dream in mind, and i for one support it 100%. the thing is that they did all of this because they didn’t like being told what to do by a tyrant 3000 miles away that has no idea what was going on where they lived or what the people living there wanted.
this sb11 thing comes down to the same principal that states should be able to do what they want in their local areas, without the help of the feds. the commerce clause is for things that cross boarders and so forth, which makes it a federal issue. but the fact that all this is talking about is things that go on inside a state where people love doing things a little different from others, such as guns utah loves guns for the most part and don’t like the gun bans.
guns don’t kill people, people kill people yeah we’ve all herd that before. but even if you deny it you know for a fact that deep down you believe it because if someone wants to kill someone they will do it, with or without a gun. if someone wants to get a gun, they will do it with or without the law. (take drugs for instance who is going to stop the illegal use of drugs, no one because it doesn’t matter if it’s bad or illegal they will do it anyways because that’s the way bad people work) those of us citizen that like guns and don’t break the laws with them, don’t like being told that they can’t have them even though they aren’t a threat just because someone who is did something dumb with a gun.
sb11 is a great thing and the feds have way to far of a reach as it is, and all they seem to have done in the last 100 years is complicate life to lengths so far i don’t even know how i would begin, get us in debt, and use us for their political gain. i mean name one thing that you have ever done that involved the government that didn’t leave you thinking, wow that was written with way too many big words to say what it needed to, or wow that was expensive to pay for a piece of paper when i already paid for it once as well as the building i’m in and the person who handed it to me, or what is that hurting that they have to freak out about it so bad.
in closing i would say again don’t complicate life and sb11 is a good thing, until i have a few minutes to wast my time typing a message to people who even if they know i’m right will try their hardest to argue.
write on mr. or miss box below mine….write on
“a tyrant 3000 miles away that has no idea what was going on where they lived or what the people living there wanted.”
Yup. Pretty much sums up Washington, D.C. in 2010.
“Now you may or may not have heard of the the Constitution”
I certainly have, and in it I read:
Article I, Section 8, Clause 3:
“[The Congress shall have power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;”
In the phrase “among the several states”, I find no power granted to regulate commerce within a state, but rather amongst states. Thus I find no power granted to regulate production and sale of a firearm manufactured in Utah, and sold to a citizen of Utah. It is however reasonable to assume that sale of a “Utah” gun to a person outside the state would fall under regulation of this clause.
So contrary to your assertion “have to register the transaction in accordance with federal law or regulations – laws and regulations that have authority granted to them by the Constitution.”
Those laws are not in fact granted authority by the constitution so long as the sale/transfer occurs only within the state.
I should also point out that if one continues reading the constitution they will find amendment 10 in the Bill of Rights which reads “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
Thus, while there are laws that restrict the sale of firearms within a state, and they are enforced, they are not based on authority found in the text of the constitution, and as such are only truly capable of being regulated by the state itself when state-to-state transfer is not involved.
Sure you can buy enough judges to say the contrary, but that doesn’t make the language magically appear in the constitution. Do you think it really fools anyone?