Word: montana
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...populist state-sovereignty movement, the sense there is so much power in Washington," says Stephen P. Halbrook, a Virginia attorney who has argued several important Second Amendment cases before the Supreme Court, including, most recently, a successful case overturning the Washington, D.C., gun ban. Halbrook says the Montana initiative had been simmering long before President Obama's election, which led to reports of a run on gun and ammunition across the country because of fear of new federal curtailment or taxation of gun ownership. "It is a grass-roots thing," Halbrook says, "not an NRA [National Rifle Association] initiative...
...Montana law was drafted by the Montana Shooting Sports Association, which has said it will support what it is likely to be a lengthy legal fight in the federal court system to affirm or strike down the law. Plans call for the association to find a pristine individual who will manufacture and sell 20 rifles without applying for a mandatory federal dealer's license. The right to do so would be asserted in a letter to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Once a BATF response likely rejecting that claim is received, the association would seek standing...
...likely the Montana law will end up before the Supreme Court, Halbrook says, following the same track as the landmark Printz v. United States case, which he argued successfully before the court. That case was filed in Helena, Mont., challenging the constitutionality of requiring local enforcement officers to perform background checks required by the federal Brady Act, regulating handgun sales. The district court found the requirement unconstitutional but was overturned by the more liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The lower court decision was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1997, four years after the Brady...
...regulation supporters say the Montana law is unconstitutional, citing long-standing court decisions going back to the Depression era based on the application of the so-called commerce clause regulating interstate commerce, the Wickard v. Filburn case, according to Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. The courts have ruled that even if a farmer grows his wheat locally, sells it locally and someone buys it locally, the entire transaction process is still governed by interstate commerce because of the concept that his actions affect the entire marketplace - including, most importantly, the ability of a farmer...
...irony is that most of the major gun manufacturers are located in blue states - Smith and Wesson in Massachusetts, Colt in Connecticut. Other large manufacturers, like Browning, located in Utah, are engaged in global commerce. Montana's bill will apply to boutique gun manufacturers who produce expensive custom-made hunting rifles, which are usually purchased by affluent hunters and collectors...