Idaho Announces It Won’t Obey Federal Gun Dictates

As previously alluded to, Idaho is not the only state to have passed legislation prohibiting law enforcement officials from enforcing gun laws originating in Washington, D.C. In addition to Kansas, Alaska has passed a law meant to preserve Second Amendment rights and as many as 37 other states have introduced similar measures in their legislatures. If they all follow the examples of Idaho, Kansas, and Alaska, the feds are really going to have to ask themselves if enforcing their gun laws is really worth it.

“‘This is an im­port­ant first step for Idaho,’ Tenth Amend­ment Cen­ter spokes­man Mike Ma­harrey told Ben­Swann.com. ‘Get­ting this law passed will en­sure that any new plans or ex­ec­ut­ive or­ders that might be com­ing our way will not be en­forced in Idaho. Then, once this meth­od is es­tab­lished and shown to be ef­fect­ive, le­gis­lat­ors can circle back and start do­ing the same for fed­er­al gun con­trol already on the books.’

Both Alaska and Kan­sas have passed sim­il­ar ‘nul­li­fic­a­tion’ laws. Kan­sas ap­proved the Second Amend­ment Pro­tec­tion Act last April, and Alaska en­acted a sim­il­ar law in June. A ProP­ub­lica in­vest­ig­a­tion from last spring found that at least 37 oth­er states have in­tro­duced sim­il­ar bills. Un­der the Kan­sas law, res­id­ents could ‘man­u­fac­ture and sell semi-auto­mat­ic weapons in-state without a fed­er­al li­cense or any fed­er­al over­sight.’ The law also made it a felony for fed­er­al au­thor­it­ies to en­force any law that con­flicts with state law.

Idaho’s Le­gis­lature — which en­joys a Re­pub­lic­an su­per­ma­jor­ity in both its cham­bers — has be­come home to many state laws that at­tempt to cir­cum­vent fed­er­al law. Earli­er this month, the state tried and failed to pass a bill that would have out­lawed fed­er­al en­vir­on­ment­al reg­u­la­tions. And in 2011, Idaho tried to de­clare the Af­ford­able Care Act null and void. Since then, Gov. Butch Ot­ter has come un­der at­tack from his fel­low Re­pub­lic­ans for soften­ing his po­s­i­tion on Obama­care.

Writ large, many con­ser­vat­ive states are ex­plor­ing cre­at­ive but ar­cane ways to cir­cum­vent fed­er­al law. One grow­ing con­ser­vat­ive cause at the state level, the Art­icle V move­ment, would at­tempt to call a con­ven­tion of states to make laws in lieu of fed­er­al over­sight.”