On March 14, Missouri governor Mike Parson signed HB 85, aka the Second Amendment Preservation Act, into law.

HB 85’s first two sections can reasonably be read as “nullification” of a sort, insofar as they point out the unconstitutionality of a number of federal laws that violate the Second Amendment.

Oddly, however, the US Department of Justice seems more concerned with its third and fourth sections of the bill, which prohibit Missouri’s courts and law enforcement agencies from enforcing, or assisting with the enforcement of, those unconstitutional federal laws, and allow Missourians to those who violate the prohibition to sue for damages of up to $50,000 per occurrence.

In a letter to Parson, which the Associated Press describes but which I haven’t been able to find a public full-text version of, Acting Assistant US Attorney General Brian Boynton cites the US Constitution’s “supremacy clause” against nullification. But his main apparent concern seems to be that the bill (AP’s words, not a direct Boynton quote) ” threatens to disrupt the working relationship between federal and local authorities … noting that Missouri receives federal grants and technical assistance.”

Replying to Boynton, Parson and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmidt clarify the bill’s intent: “Missouri is not attempting to nullify federal law. Instead, Missouri is defending its people from federal government overreach by prohibiting state and local law enforcement agencies from being used by the federal government to infringe Missourian’s rights to keep and bear arms.”

Under the Constitution, Missouri’s government has every power to do that. It neither requires state governments and state employees to enforce federal laws, nor empowers the federal government to compel them to do so.

In the normal course of things, local and state law enforcement agencies assist federal law enforcement agencies with great enthusiasm.

Why? Well, money — the “federal grants and technical assistance” that Boynton refers to in his letter. The feds spread around money (including a share of loot seized under “asset forfeiture” laws) and material (including suprlus military equipment), and that bulks up local law enforcement budgets. Cops, like everyone, enjoy better (or at least cooler) equipment and more opportunities for overtime pay.

That’s a bad thing, not a good thing. It at least partially explains why 21st century America seems to be literally crawling with militarized  cops. Cops wearing military utilities instead of plain vanilla police uniforms. Cops carrying M-16s instead of .38 Specials. Cops driving armored vehicles and SUVs with “Seized from Narcotics Traffickers” stickers on them instead of plain vanilla patrol cars.

Unconstitutional gun laws aren’t the half of it. The war on drugs is probably a much bigger component in what amounts to a federal bribery scheme to get local cops off the job of enforcing local law and on the job of “assisting” federal thuggery of various sorts.

The Second Amendment Preservation Act is a good start, but it’s just a start. If we ever want to get law enforcement back to its legitimate peacekeeping functions, state prohibitions on working with the feds should apply to everything.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On June 16, US president Joe Biden and Russian president Vladimir Putin issued a Joint Statement on Strategic Stability, in which they “reaffirm the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” and “seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.”

With the extension of the New START treaty and joint statements like that, it might seem that things aren’t looking too terribly bad with respect to reducing the threat of nuclear war. But talk and action are two very different things. Let’s roll back the calendar to the day before the rose-colored glasses went on.

“Despite calls from some Democrats and arms control advocates to slash spending on strategic forces,” National Defense magazine reported on June 15, “the Biden administration appears committed to forging ahead with previous administrations’ nuclear modernization programs.”

The Congressional Budget Office expects the US government to spend $634 billion on operating and “modernizing” its nuclear arsenal over the next ten years, and the Biden administration has requested $43.2 billion for such activities in its budget proposal for next year.

That doesn’t sound much like “groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures” to me.

And what good are future arms control measures when the parties obviously haven’t bothered to fulfill their obligations under past such measures?

Per the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, both the US and Russian regimes have been committed for more than 50 years “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.”

But according to the Federation of American Scientists’ “Status of World Nuclear Forces” report, Russia and the US still maintain arsenals of, respectively, 6,257 and 5,550 nuclear warheads.

And, FAS says, “[t]he pace of reduction has slowed significantly compared with the 1990s and appears to continue only because of dismantlement of retired weapons; the military stockpiles (operational nuclear weapons) are increasing again.”

How many warheads constitute a “nuclear deterrent,” assuming such a thing is truly needed until we are clearly approaching the zero nuke mark?

Well, the US only has nine cities with populations in excess of one million. Russia only has 15. The ability to wipe out all those population centers, especially from platforms like submarines that aren’t likely to be taken out in a surprise first strike, seems like a heck of a deterrent to starting a nuclear fight (and an implicit terrorist threat, but one we’re already living with and then some).

Even adding in key military bases as targets, how could more than, say, 50 warheads each (less than one percent of current arsenals) be justified as a “deterrent?”

And what’s the holdup on getting down to that number?

No additional agreements are necessary. Either side can do it unilaterally, without agreement from the other, and  the other side would be left just wasting money on expensive, dangerous, and effectively useless  junk.

It’s time to grow up and end this silly nuclear penis size contest.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Next week, I’m going to travel across a bunch of imaginary lines drawn on the ground by politicians.

Those lines are called “borders,” and in the case of my upcoming trip they separate areas known to most as Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

There are also a bunch of other borders, too numerous to mention, within THOSE borders, separating places called “counties,” “cities,” etc.

I don’t expect to have any problem crossing all those borders. You probably don’t have any problem crossing them either. You may cross two or three borders on your way to work, or when you pop out to grab dinner and watch a movie. Chances are you won’t be pulled over at any checkpoints to have your “papers” checked when you cross from Utah into Idaho, or from Cook County into Chicago, to make sure you have permission to cross the imaginary lines.

On my own trip, I could decide to stop traveling, rent an apartment, hit the “help wanted” ads for a job, etc. and nobody would so much as raise an eyebrow (well, nobody but my wife, anyway).

If I suddenly decide to put down roots  in Burlington or Lancaster, I won’t be put into shackles and deported to Gainesville. I’ll  just be treated as subject to the laws in Vermont or New Hampshire instead of Florida. No biggie.

But if I want to travel less than 50 miles between Burlington and Saint-Armand, or less than 60 miles between Lancaster and Dixville, or fly  to Acapulco or Reykjavik and back for a vacation, a bunch of cultists on both sides of some of the imaginary lines separating those places will start insisting that where I go and what I do is very much their business.

Why? Because they fervently believe that those imaginary lines imbue them with a special magical right to require that I get their permission to move, to stop, to live, to work, etc. And, unfortunately, these particular cultists employ large numbers of thugs to enforce their superstitions at gunpoint.

The next time you hear about a “border crisis,” I hope you’ll keep in mind that if there really is such a “crisis,” it is caused by those cultists and their obsession with controlling others, not by the ordinary, peaceful practice of free people traveling wherever they damn well please.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY