Law Shield would like to inform our members that a federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Kansas Second Amendment Protection Act, saying the suit from the Brady Campaign was “without merit.”
In the decision, U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson wrote, “Brady Campaign lacks Article III standing to challenge the Second Amendment Protection Act in this lawsuit because it has not shown that enforcement of the statute inflicts an actual or imminently-threatened injury on any Brady Campaign member.”
According to a blog post by the Tenth Amendment Center, the law, signed by Gov. Sam Brownback in 2013, reads, in part:
Any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the government of the United States which violates the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in the state of Kansas.
In conjunction with Section 6a (quoted above), the bill defines what is meant by “the second amendment to the constitution of the United States,” and that it isn’t based off a decision of the Supreme Court.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reserves to the people, individually, the right to keep and bear arms as that right was understood at the time that Kansas was admitted to statehood in 1861, and the guaranty of that right is a matter of contract between the State and people of Kansas and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Kansas in 1859 and the United States in 1861.
Based on this text, the State of Kansas would not be allowed to participate in any federal gun control measures that restrict the individual right to keep and bear arms as understood in 1861.
See our previous coverage of the nullification bill here.
The Brady Campaign’s legal argument was that the state law is “an unconstitutional attempt to nullify federal gun control regulations.” Their concern is that state enforcement of the act “will have the effect of deterring application of federal gun laws in Kansas.”
Yes. Exactly.
Of further interest to Law Shield members, what caught our attention in this matter was an entity that wasn’t part of the suit: the federal government.
Former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder wrote a nastygram to Gov. Brownback when the law passed, calling it unenforceable, but in this federal court case, DOJ wasn’t to be found.
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