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Fair enough. But United States v Lopez weakened the Gun-Free School Zone Act a bit to require prosecutors to prove a link between the gun in question and inters
by dreamcompiler 5y ago
Fair enough. But United States v Lopez weakened the Gun-Free School Zone Act a bit to require prosecutors to prove a link between the gun in question and interstate commerce.
- notch656a 5y agoIn theory it weakened it but in practice it did not. Merely creating a good yourself in your own state for your own personal non-commercial use is considered interstate commerce. See Supreme Court refusing to hear Kettler's conviction for buying a suppressor made in the same state (the NFA regulating suppressors is constitutional through the interstate commerce clause, and gun parts made completely in one state for consumption in that state are interstate commerce), and the many other convictions for home made guns. All firearms have interstate commerce legally even if there is no link from any practical/physical viewpoint. You could pull iron out of the ground underneath your house, refine and form it yourself and create your own machine shop purely from raw material in your state and then make a gun, completely bypassing any trade of a single molecule from another state and it would be interstate commerce. The requirement for a link is a meaningless gesture to ensure the writing of it is constitutionally accurate.
- dreamcompiler 5y agoWondered about that. I kind of suspected US v Lopez might have ended up being just a meaningless formality in practice. Thanks for the clarification.