Utah to Feds: You Can’t Regulate Guns Made In-State

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Utah Governor Gary Herbert’s signed SB11: the Utah State-Made Firearms Protection Act. The bill tells the feds they have no regulatory power over firearms manufactured and sold in Utah. Not that the governor’s website or the Trib are saying so in as many words. Both somehow manage to avoid quoting the legislation—a reticence that The Truth About Guns doesn’t share. “(13) Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce in basic materials does not include authority to regulate firearms, firearm actions or receivers, firearms accessories, and ammunition made in the state from basic materials.” Oh for Pete’s sake.

Flynn, the retired U. constitutional scholar, called SB11 and companion message bills “asinine” and said they ignore not just court precedent on federal regulation of interstate commerce but the Constitution’s supremacy clause. Utah lawmakers are denying the federal government’s legitimate authority, he said, even though they go through the motions of supporting it every day.

“Whenever they stand up and pledge allegiance to the flag,” he said, “they’re acknowledging that the federal government is sovereign.”

Pish posh says Governor Herbert. He says the bill “illustrates the universal yearning for freedom and shows the people still feel the spark that inspired our ancestors at Lexington and Valley Forge. My hope is that the march toward tyranny can be turned back with our votes.” More prosaically . . .

Herbert said Thursday that he has concerns about the constitutionality of the bill and has serious doubts that the lawsuit will even make it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon, a candidate for Herbert’s job, said if he were governor he would not have stuck Utah taxpayers with the potential legal bill Utah now faces. ‘I’m pro-gun,’ he said, “but I’m also fiscally conservative.'”