Since Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration on January 20, the news cycle keeps coming back around to two questions.
Every time Trump issues, or federal agencies attempt to implement, an unconstitutional executive order — one or both of which happen on a near-daily basis — journalists and pundits want to know:
First, will the courts order a halt to the executive branch’s latest roughshod running over of the US Constitution?
Second, if the courts do so rule, will the administration comply with those rulings?
I find that line of questioning rather odd, since history’s already answered it for us many times over the Constitution’s 230-odd years of supposed rule.
The answer to both questions is “maybe, maybe not.”
American government — legislative, executive, and judicial branches alike — point to the Constitution when it supports their desires and ignores it when it thwarts those desires.
The Supreme Court in particular boasts a long record of changing its mind, reinterpreting the Constitution’s usually fairly clear commands based on deference to both popular opinion and the immediate goals of the other two branches, rendering the interpretation of law most favorable to government actors even in contradiction to that law’s own text, and hiding in chambers when its occasional ruling the other way gets ignored or “worked around.”
We need look no further back than March 26 for an example of how well we can expect the Constitution to fare versus when the Supreme Court weighs its requirements against executive edicts contradicting those requirements.
In Vanderstok v. Bondi (formerly Vanderstok v. Garland — Trump’s appointee to the office of US Attorney General took the case over from Biden’s), the court ruled that:
- A rogue federal agency (the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) may
- Apply an unconstitutional federal law (the Gun Control Act of 1968) to
- Objects which that law’s text does not cover and never has covered.
The objects at issue are “ghost gun” kits. They’re not guns. They’re just collections of parts that, with some work and possibly additional components, can be made into guns.
The text of the GCA didn’t cover “ghost gun” kits and, as Justice Neil Gorsuch openly admits in the majority ruling, had no reason to: “[T]he milling equipment, materials needed, and designs were far too expensive for individuals to make firearms practically or reliably on their own.”
Beyond magically reinterpreting the text, meaning, and intent of the GCA, the court also just ignored the plain language, and the clear and unambiguous meaning, of the Second Amendment: “[T]he right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
In noting that it refers to “a right of the people,” the Constitution’s proscription applies not just to the federal government and all its agencies, but to state and local governments as well.
In addition to being stupid and evil, “gun control” legislation, of any kind, at any level of government, violates the “Supreme Law of the Land.” Period.
Don’t expect the courts to protect your rights. They quit that job long ago.
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.
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