Even the NRA Won’t Support the Radical Republican Law that Instructs Cops to Ignore Federal Regulations
The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Missouri and two of its top officials, saying the state is endangering public safety with a new law that purports to nullify federal gun laws.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Kansas City, asks a judge to declare the state’s Second Amendment Preservation Act invalid and order Missouri not to enforce it.
“This act impedes criminal law enforcement operations in Missouri,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Missouri Gov. Michael Parson, a former sheriff, signed the law in June at the Frontier Justice gun shop in the Kansas City suburb of Lee’s Summit. Under the law, Missouri citizens can sue police departments for $50,000 in damages for violations. Even the National Rifle Association didn’t support the bill.
Republican State Senator Eric Burlison recently sponsored a bill dubbed the ‘Make Murder Legal Act,’ which would have given shooters the benefit of the doubt that they acted in self defense.
Parson and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, who is seeking the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate, are also defendants in the lawsuit.
“The law is on our side in this case, and I intend to beat the Biden administration in court,” Schmitt said.
Parson has called the law a political statement, not an effort to impact local police departments.
Worst of the Worst
At least 17 states have passed Second Amendment sanctuary laws, but Missouri’s is widely considered to be the worst. Iowa lawmakers are considering a similar bill where police could be fined up to $50,000 for enforcing federal gun laws.
Missouri state Senator Eric Burlison, a Republican, pushed for the law. He recently sponsored a bill dubbed the Make Murder Legal Act which would have given shooters the benefit of the doubt that they acted in self defense. That bill was too much for even Republican lawmakers and was blocked, at least for now, by a state Senate committee.
“We are telling President Biden to go pound sand,” Burlison said.
The law preserves only those federal firearm laws that are also replicated by Missouri state law, nullifying essentially everything else. Slaveholders used the same thinking more than 150 years ago.
Officer Shot
Missouri has the sixth-highest rate of gun violence in our country with an average of 1,222 people killed and 2,584 wounded each year.
After Parson signed the law, Missouri law enforcement initially refused federal help to trace a gun used to kill a police officer in Independence, Mo. In Columbia, Mo., police shut an imaging machine used to share information about guns fired in murders and other crimes.
Some police won’t release investigative records to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) or participate in federal grand juries about firearms investigations unless they are served with a subpoena compelling them to do so.
In September, a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper stopped a vehicle for speeding and found the driver was wanted on an arrest warrant for a federal firearm-related violation. The trooper let the driver go, apparently because of Missouri’s new law. The driver was later arrested in Arizona.
The law invalidates prohibitions on firearm possession by people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence, people subject to some restraining orders and people dishonorably discharged from the military.
The law also invalidates federal prohibitions on felons possessing firearms or ammunition for people convicted of felonies whose crimes aren’t considered felonies under Missouri state law. Rioting is an example.d