Question(s) of the day

Posted on April 16, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

Can anyone tell me what is “common sense” about the current gun control regulations being proposed, and EXACTLY what they will do to prevent future violence? What will the proposed legislation do that current gun laws do not do? Who is going to enforce these proposed new laws when the current administration admits they do not have the manpower to enforce the laws already on the books?

Facts are an inconvenience for those pushing for more gun control. Facts such as:

*15,000 felons or fugitives failed the current background check system in 2011, and the current administration prosecuted 44!

*Gun sales are at an all time high, yet crime in the US continues to go down!

*States with “shall issue” concealed weapons permit systems have lower crime rates than states that are difficult/impossible for the average citizen to obtain a permit.

So, someone PLEASE answer the above questions.

(facts based upon FBI crime statistics for 2011)

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Posted in 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Firearms, Immigration

California’s “privileged” public servants!

Posted on April 10, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

The California Senate has voted themselves an exemption to the gun control legislation passed or to be passed in the state. They have in essence said “we don’t trust you with guns, but we can have whatever we want”. They put themselves above ordinary citizens, holding themselves out to be more important and worthy of the right of protection than the rest of us peons.

How long must this go on and how far do they have to push their self-important elitism before the voters get angry, get informed, and get them out of office?

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Lawmakers need education!

Posted on April 8, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

Why do some lawmakers believe they can legislate that which they obviously do not know about? Most specifically guns. There has been a rash of misinformation propagated by the mainstream media related to gun issues and our elected employees that are attempting to legislate our Second Amendment rights.

Some examples:

Crazy Uncle Joe and his insistence that you don’t need an “assault” rifle, just get a shotgun. It is easier for a woman to use a shotgun. He goes on to say he has told his wife to both shoot off two rounds (from a double barrel shotgun no less) off the balcony of their home to scare off potential intruders, or better yet, just shoot through the door. It is obvious he does not understand either the law, or physics. A double barrel 12 gauge is much harder for a woman to control than a .223/5.56 “assault” rifle, and it is illegal to shoot blasts into the air, or through the door.

Then along comes Representative Diana DeGette, saying magazines for firearms are “bullets” and when those currently owned magazines are used, the supply will dry up if you can’t buy more. She does not even understand that they can be reloaded..and she is the person who wrote the bill to ban “high capacity” (actually, standard capacity in most jurisdictions) magazines.

Along comes the queen of gun control herself, Senator Diane Feinstein. She was heard during a senate hearing to say “We have federal regulations and state laws that prohibit hunting ducks with more than three rounds. And yet it’s legal to hunt humans with 15-round, 30-round, even 150-round magazines.”. I don’t know where she is hunting, but last time I checked, it was not legal to hunt humans with even 1 round, let alone 150 rounds. Maybe she lives somewhere that it is legal to hunt humans, but where I live there are laws against murder, attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, etc.

And finally, I can’t leave out our president. He was heard to say “make sure that we don’t have another 20 children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon – by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly.” Is this a case of making an error, or is it a case of misleading the un-educated American voters into believing he is waging a war on fully-automatic weapons to gain more support? I have my opinions but will let you decide for yourself.

Do yourselves and the rest of us a favor. Get educated before you seek to legislate our God given right to self protection. The Founding Fathers saw fit to write the Second Amendment in such a way to prevent the government from enacting laws to restrict our rights to “keep and bear” firearms, yet the liberal/progressive agenda to disarm law abiding citizens has become more clear every day.

For those who say “nobody is trying to take away your guns”, I will leave you with another quote from the “queen” herself…“If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the United States, for an outright ban, picking up everyone of them (every gun) Mr. and Mrs. America, turn ‘em all in. I would have done it.”

Try to refute that quote!

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Posted in 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Firearms

People with guns save lives

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

By Thomas Sowell

4/2/2013

We all know that guns can cost lives because the media repeat this message endlessly, as if we could not figure it out for ourselves. But even someone who reads newspapers regularly and watches numerous television newscasts may never learn that guns also save lives– much less see any hard facts comparing how many lives are lost and how many are saved.

But that trade-off is the real issue, not the Second Amendment or the National Rifle Association, which so many in the media obsess about. If guns cost more lives than they save, we can always repeal the Second Amendment. But if guns save more lives than they cost, we need to know that, instead of spending time demonizing the National Rifle Association.

The defensive use of guns is usually either not discussed at all in the media or else is depicted as if it means bullets flying in all directions, like the gunfight at the OK Corral. But most defensive uses of guns do not involve actually pulling the trigger.

If someone comes at you with a knife and you point a gun at him, he is very unlikely to keep coming, and far more likely to head in the other direction, perhaps in some haste, if he has a brain in his head. Only if he is an idiot are you likely to have to pull the trigger. And if he is an idiot with a knife coming after you, you had better have a trigger to pull.

Surveys of American gun owners have found that 4 to 6 percent reported using a gun in self-defense within the previous five years. That is not a very high percentage but, in a country with 300 million people, that works out to hundreds of thousands of defensive uses of guns per year.

Yet we almost never hear about these hundreds of thousands of defensive uses of guns from the media, which will report the killing of a dozen people endlessly around the clock.

The murder of a dozen innocent people is unquestionably a human tragedy. But that is no excuse for reacting blindly by preventing hundreds of thousands of other people from defending themselves against meeting the same fate.

Although most defensive uses of guns do not involve actually shooting, nevertheless the total number of criminals killed by armed private citizens runs into the thousands per year. A gun can also come in handy if a pit bull or some other dangerous animal is after you or your child.

We need to recognize the painful reality that, regardless of what we do or don’t do about gun control laws, there will be innocent people killed by guns. We can then look at hard facts in order to decide how we can minimize the number of needless deaths.

But that is not the way the issue is presented by many in politics or the media. Every story about an accidental shooting in the home will be repeated again and again, while a thousand stories about lives saved by defensive uses of a gun will never see the light of day in most newspapers or on most television newscasts.

More children may die in bathtub accidents than in shooting accidents, but you are not likely to read that in most newspapers or see it on television newscasts. Some in the media inflate the number of children killed by counting as children the members of criminal teenage gangs who shoot each other in their turf fights.

Many seize upon statistics which show that Britain has stronger gun control laws than the United States and lower murder rates. Yet they ignore other countries with stronger gun control laws than the United States, but which have much higher murder rates, such as Brazil, Russia and Mexico.

Even in the case of Britain, London had a much lower murder rate than New York during the years after New York State’s 1911 Sullivan Law imposed very strict gun control, while anyone could buy a shotgun in London with no questions asked in the 1950s.

Today, virtually the entire law-abiding population of Britain is disarmed– and gun crimes are vastly more common. Gun control laws make crime a safer occupation when victims are unarmed.

The gun control crusade today is like the Prohibition crusade 100 years ago. It is a shared zealotry that binds the self-righteous know-it-alls in a warm fellowship of those who see themselves as fighting on the side of the angels against the forces of evil. It is a lofty role that they are not about to give up for anything so mundane as facts– or even the lives of other people.

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.

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Posted in 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Firearms

By all means, let’s reform immigration…

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

From the Los Angeles Times Newspaper

1. 40% of all workers in Los Angeles County ( Los Angeles County has 10.2 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This is because they are predominantly illegal aliens working without a green card.

2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

3. 75% of people on the most-wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.

4. Over 2/3 of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal, whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

5. Nearly 35% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.

7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.

8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.

9. 21 radio stations in Los Angeles are Spanish speaking.

10. In Los Angeles County 5.1 million people speak English, 3.9 million speak Spanish.
(There are 10.2 million people in Los Angeles County .)

(All 10 of the above statements are from the Los Angeles Times)
Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops, but 29% are on welfare.
Over 70% of the United States ‘ annual population growth (and over 90% of California , Florida , and New York ) results from immigration.
29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.

And now the liberals want to reform immigration to allow those here illegally to remain and gain a “path to citizenship”! I think they should have 90 days to leave or we track them down and deport their asses back to the garbage dump they came from.

Yes, we are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws, and if they choose to not follow the laws, they should not be allowed to be immigrants!

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Posted in Immigration

Modern interpretation of the Constitution and Bill of Rights

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

I continue to be perplexed by the liberal and “progressive” media and citizens in their argument against the 2nd Amendment. They say “ok, you can have your guns, but only muskets because that is what was available at the time of the writing of the Constitution”. Let’s look at this from a logic standpoint.

When the Constitution was written, the framers did not place any restrictions on the ownership of “arms”, in fact they were very specific in the writing of the 2nd Amendment to provide language barring the government from “infringing” on the “Peoples” right to keep and bear arms.

At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, the musket was the most advanced form of hand-held arms used by the armed forces that had just ousted the British, but it was not the only weapon available at the time, yet the founding fathers did not limit the “People” of the time to only muskets, or only pistols, they did not even limit them in writing from access to heavy arms such as cannons.

Fast forward to modern day life. The AR-15 is a civilian, semi-automatic version of the current issue fighting rifle in the US military, the select fire M-16, and if we were to keep par as was the intent of the 2nd Amendment when written, we would have the arms to match the current military.

Those that claim the 2nd Amendment does not protect modern firearms as the founding fathers would not have “envisioned” the modern state of weapons, the argument could just as easily be made against the 1st Amendment and the use of e-mail, cell phone, text messaging, radio, television, or anything beyond written word on paper or spoken word, but that is where the liberal and progressives change their attitude. Modern forms of speech transmission must be protected, but modern arms are allowed to be restricted…does anyone else see the dichotomy in this argument?

I guess for the liberals and progressives, it is “freedom for everyone, as long as you agree with my position”.

 

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Posted in 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Firearms

IF THEY COME FOR YOUR GUNS, DO YOU HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO FIGHT?

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

I feel a tremendous responsibility to write this article though I am a little apprehensive. Thinking about the possibility of rising up against our own government is a frightening thing for many of us. I am not Johnny Rambo and I will be the first to admit that I do not want to die. The reason I feel compelled to write this, however, is simply because I don’t think the average American is equipped with the facts. I feel that a lot of American citizens feel like they have no choice but to surrender their guns if the government comes for them. I blame traditional media sources for this mass brainwash and I carry the responsibility of all small independent bloggers to tell the truth. So my focus today is to lay out your constitutional rights as an American, and let you decide what to do with those rights.

About a month ago I let the “democracy” word slip in a discussion with a fellow blogger. I know better. Americans have been conditioned to use this term. It’s not an accurate term and it never has been a correct term to describe our form of government.

The truth is that the United States of America is a constitutional republic. This is similar to a democracy because our representatives are selected by democratic elections, but ultimately our representatives are required to work within the framework of our constitution. In other words, even if 90% of Americans want something that goes against our founding principles, they have no right to call for a violation of constitutional rights.

Our founders did not want a “democracy” for they feared a true democracy was just as dangerous as a monarchy. The founders were highly educated people who were experienced in defending themselves against tyranny. They understood that the constitution could protect the people by limiting the power of anyone to work outside of it much better than a pure system of popularity. A system of checks and balances was set up to help limit corruption of government and also the potential for an “immoral majority” developing within the American People. We have forgotten in this country that we are ultimately ruled by a constitution.

Why is a democracy potentially just as dangerous as a monarchy?
Let’s look at something that Benjamin Franklin said because it answers that question more fully and succinctly than I can.

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. -Benjamin Franklin

Even 230+ years ago our founders were perceptive enough to realize that democracy was a dangerous form of government. How so? Because the citizens of a country can become just as corrupt as any government. We have seen evidence of this throughout history. Ask Native Americans and African-Americans if this population can become corrupt.

I think in 2012 we are seeing evidence of what Franklin was trying to tell us. Just because a majority of people may support certain ideas it does not mean that those ideas are just. In simple terms, just because most Americans love our president and voted for him, it does not mean that he has the power to go against our constitutional rights.

Next I’d like to review the text of the second amendment. It is very clear. This is the law of this land. So when Senator Feinstein or President Obama talks about taking your guns, you need to think about something. Are they honoring their sworn oath to uphold the constitution?

The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. -Thomas Jefferson

Firearms stand next in importance to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence … From the hour the Pilgrims landed, to the present day, events, occurrences, and tendencies prove that to insure peace, security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable . . . the very atmosphere of firearms everywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that is good. -George Washington

The Constitution shall never be construed….to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms. -Samuel Adams

I could find hundreds of quotes like these. This country was built on the right to bear arms. It was built on the rights of an individual to bear arms, regardless of what his government or neighbor happened to think. This is crystal clear. Ironically the people who voice their opinions against this right have their free speech protected by your guns. Without guns in this country, all other amendments become null and void, simply because “We the People” will lose our power of enforcement.

We need to keep this in mind as our “representatives” try to push gun bans. I don’t care if 99% of people are in support of gun bans (which is far from the case), it is a violation of our constitutional rights, plain and simple.

A constitutional republic protects the rights of the individual even when their ideas are very much in the minority. If I were the only person in America who believed in the 2nd amendment, I would still be within my rights to call upon it. You would all think I was insane and possibly celebrate if I was gunned down, but in the end I would be the only true American among us.

Our framers were very clear on this. If my government comes to take my guns, they are violating one of my constitutional rights that is covered by the 2nd amendment.

Congress could pass gun ban legislation by a 90%+ margin and it just would not matter. I think some people are very unclear on this. This is the reason we have a Supreme Court, and though I do not doubt that the Supreme Court can also become corrupt, in 2008 they got it right. They supported the constitution. It does not matter what the majority supports because America is not a democracy. A constitutional republic protects the rights of every single citizen, no matter what their “elected servants” say. A majority in America only matters when the constitution is not in play.

I just wrote what every believer in the constitution wants to say, and what every constitutional blogger needs to write. The truth of the matter is that this type of speech is viewed as dangerous and radical or subversive, and it could gain me a world of trouble that I do not want. It is also the truth. To make myself clear I will tell you again. If they come for your guns it is your right to use those guns against them. You are protected by our constitution.

Most of the articles I am reading on the subject are trying to give you clues without just coming out and saying it. I understand that because certain things in this country will get you on a list that you don’t want to be on. I may well be on that list. This blog is small and growing so I may not be there yet, but I have dreams. I also have my own list of subversives and anyone who attempts to deny my constitutional rights is on that list.

If I go down fighting then I was not fighting to harm these human beings. I was simply defending my liberty and yours. It is self-defense and it is what our country was built on. We won our freedom in self-defense. We would not be ruled by a tyrannical government in the 1770′s and we will not be ruled in 2012 by a tyrannical government. There is no difference.

This is a case of right and wrong. As of now the 2nd amendment stands. It has never been repealed. If Feinstein or Barack have a problem with the constitution then they should be removed from office. They are not defending the constitution which they have sworn an oath to protect. It is treasonous to say the least. They would likely say the same about me, but I have the constitution, the founders, and the Supreme Court on my side. They only have their inflated egos.

I am not writing this to incite people. I am writing this in hopes that somehow I can make a tiny difference. I have no idea how many of my neighbors have the will to defend their constitutional rights. 2%? 20%? I am afraid that 20% is a high number, unfortunately. When push comes to shove many people may give up and submit to being ruled. I believe that our government is banking on this.

You must start thinking about this because I believe that the day is coming soon and I personally believe it has already been planned. Not all conspiracy theories are hogwash. They may throw down the gauntlet soon and my suggestion is that you prepare yourself to react.

I mean no disrespect to our elected officials but they need to understand that “We the People” will not be disarmed. If they proceed then it is they that are provoking us and we will act accordingly. We are within our rights to do so.

For those who are in support of taking the guns, you need to ask yourself a very important question, and I am not just talking about the politicians, because if you support them, you have chosen your side.

“Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him — better take a closer look at the American Indian.” Henry Ford

Posted on January 3, 2013 by Dean Garrison

Dean Garrison (born 1955) is a contemporary American author and crime fiction novelist. He was born in Michigan, grew up in the Indiana, Illinois, and Texas, and received his B.A. degree from Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan. Garrison is a Crime Scene Technician in West Michigan. His research in the fields of crime scene investigation and Shooting Reconstruction are widely published in forensic journals under the name “D.H. Garrison, Jr.”

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Posted in 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Firearms

Political Courage

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

Why is it when the President or anyone else attempting to push their agenda talks about influencing senators and assembly members to vote in the way he wants them to, he says they need to show “political courage”? What makes it politically courageous to vote for or against a bill?

The reason they are asked to show “political courage” is because it is an unpopular position and if they vote as requested, they face the real possibility their political career is over.

Case in point, the President has recently announced he will travel the country (on our dime, while we are in a fiscal crisis) to promote further gun control. Why? Because he is calling out our elected representatives to show “political courage” to vote for his gun control agenda. His claim is that a “majority of Americans” support his “common sense” gun control measures…but if that were true, would any representative really need to show “political courage” to vote for it? I don’t think so. If they did have a majority of American people in favor of their gun control, every senator and assembly member would vote for it and broadcast it loud and clear so they could be re-elected by the “majority” in favor of the measure.

I think they realize there is no “majority” in favor, and each and every Senator and Representative that votes for gun control (with the exception of a few from very liberal states) faces a real challenge come election time…hence the “political courage”.

If you care about the future of your country and your Constitutional liberties, then you will contact your elected representatives and ensure they truly represent your position when they vote. That is what American was built upon, representation of the people by elected officials that cared about the Constitution and the will of the People!

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Gun control…will it work?

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Nitro — 2 Comments

Some people seem to have a bit of difficulty understanding gun control and if it Works or not. So, what I’m going to do is contrast the two ideas and explain…

The Common theme for gun control is restriction by registration followed by confiscation.

Registration: is said to work by limiting and regulating gun sales. If you buy a gun it is registered to you and only you, anything happens with that gun it’s up to you the owner to explain. Guns cannot be bought or sold without detailed knowledge of it and strict monitoring of those with registered firearms. This is supposed to help keep guns out of criminal hands.

In a perfect world registration may have a better effect but in this one… Registration very, very, very rarely has any effect at all. In order to effectively register firearms one would have to start almost before guns were even invented. In the U.S there is an unknown number of firearms the number is said to be higher than 300,000,000 and even then that may be a low estimate. Trying to get 300,000,000 gun owners to register their guns would be difficult at best. The 300,000,000 firearms said to be in the U.S will simply “Fall off the boat” firearms will continue to be bought sold and manufactured and there will still be no control over it. Laws made ex post facto are generally doomed to fail, And the result of such laws may be catastrophic.

Restrictions proposed include Magazine bans, Weapons types restrictions ( Handgun bans, Assault weapons bans that stuff)

Magazine bans: are said to work by limiting the availability of High capacity magazines and reduce capacity of ammunition on hand and to force a shooter to reload more frequently. The theory is that if the shooter has to reload more often fewer people will be killed and it may open a window of delay to offer bystanders a chance to attack the shooter.

When you review the details of past shootings you’ll find that no matter the capacity of the magazines people are still killed and very rarely do bystanders have the chance to engage the shooter and even rarer still is the shooter effectively stopped. Another important fact during mass shooting events the shooter typically carries more than one firearm, Unfortunately this means if the shooter encounters an attacker he can simply alternate weapons find cover, reload and resume firing. The second important fact, during a Mass shooting event the shooter is almost never stopped by a person with a gun… This is due to strict regulation of lawful firearms owners and the hefty fines placed upon them if they carry their firearms into the shooting galleries we call gun free zones.

Assault weapons bans: are said to work by limiting the availability and supply of firearms under the assault weapons category. This narrows down the types of firearms one can legally own.

Semiautomatic firearms ignorantly referred to as assault weapons are among the most popular firearms on the market and growing in popularity, Their ease of use, Plethora of caliber combinations and attachments make them a favorite for hunting and defensive uses. With simple techniques and schematics readily available it is quite easy to manufacture a common firearm like an AR15. Making it illegal to manufacture these firearms doesn’t mean it cannot be done and it certainly doesn’t mean that it won’t be done. Criminals typically use firearms that are common if you ban one type of firearm they will continue to use the firearms that are available and the firearms common at the time. Banning a certain type of firearms does not mean that criminals will magically stop using them or that mass shootings will stop in the near future it just means that criminals will have to adjust and law-abiding people will continue to be out gunned.

The saddest fact of all… Many of these gun control laws are not constructed with honest intentions. When the ability of the law-abiding person to defend themselves is decreased the abilities of criminals are increased. For some reason we refuse to help those who are mentally Ill and refuse to enforce laws that make sure criminals and the mentally ill aren’t getting guns and we never seem to prosecute those who commit crimes or fail background checks. If we cannot enforce the laws we have already how would it be easier to enforce new ones and what good would it really do?

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Posted in 2nd Amendment, Constitution, Firearms

Yes, states can nullify federal laws!

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Nitro — Leave a comment

By ROBERT A. LEVY
Posted 03/18/2013 04:59 PM ET
Rumblings from ardent states’ rights advocates grow louder in the wake of perceived federal overreach in such areas as health care, immigration reform, marijuana regulation and gun control.

Indeed, on March 13 the Oklahoma House voted overwhelmingly to invalidate President Barack Obama’s signature legislation, the Affordable Care Act. That process is known as nullification. But is it constitutional?

In a nutshell: (1) State officials need not enforce federal laws that the state has determined to be unconstitutional; nor may Congress mandate that states enact specific laws. But (2), states may not block federal authorities who attempt to enforce a federal law unless a court has held that the law is unconstitutional. And (3), individuals are not exempt from prosecution by the federal government just because the state where they reside has legalized an activity or pronounced that a federal law is unconstitutional; if convicted, individuals can attempt to vindicate their constitutional rights in court.

Let’s examine each of those questions:

First, are states required to enforce federal laws and enact regulatory programs that Congress mandates? The answer on both counts is “No.”

In the 1997 case, Printz v. United States, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government could not command state law enforcement authorities to conduct background checks on prospective handgun purchasers.

In the 1992 case, New York v. United States, the Court ruled that Congress couldn’t require states to enact specified waste disposal regulations.

The second question is more difficult: Can a state impede federal authorities from enforcing their own law if the state deems the law to be unconstitutional. The answer is “No,” although more radical nullification proponents would disagree. They point to the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 and 1799, in which Thomas Jefferson and James Madison asserted a state’s right to nullify the Alien and Sedition Acts.

But consider those resolutions in context: Jefferson and Madison had argued that the states must have the final word because the Constitution had not expressly established an ultimate authority on constitutional matters.

Four years later in Marbury v. Madison, Chief Justice John Marshall resolved that oversight. He wrote: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.” Since then, instead of 50 individual states effecting their own views regarding constitutionality, we have one Supreme Court establishing a uniform rule for the entire nation.

The Framers concurred. In Federalist 78, Alexander Hamilton had written: “\ limited constitution … can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the constitution void.” Madison shared that view. He wrote: “(I)ndependent tribunals … will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive.”

Even before Marbury, the Virginia General Assembly had passed Madison’s Report of 1800. It acknowledged that states can declare federal laws unconstitutional; but the declaration would have no legal effect unless the courts agreed. Here’s what Madison wrote: State “declarations … are expressions of opinion, (intended only for) exciting reflection. The expositions of the judiciary, on the other hand, are carried into immediate effect.”

Madison also published Notes on Nullification in 1834. There, he wrote that an individual state cannot unilaterally invalidate a federal law. That process requires collective action by the states. Similarly, Jefferson’s Kentucky Resolutions had described nullification as an act by “the several states” that formed the Constitution.

Moreover, seven states rejected resolutions similar to Virginia’s and Kentucky’s; six states passed alternate resolutions holding that constitutionality was for courts to decide; four states took no action. No other state went along with Virginia or Kentucky.

Since then, nullification attempts have failed on three occasions: In 1828, South Carolina tried to nullify two national tariffs. President Andrew Jackson proclaimed nullification to be treason; Congress authorized Jackson to send troops, and the state backed down. In 1859, the Supreme Court rejected nullification in Ableman v. Booth.

Booth had frustrated recapture of a slave in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court held the act unconstitutional, but the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the conviction. In 1958, after southern states refused to integrate their schools, the Supreme Court in Cooper v. Aaron held that nullification “is not a constitutional doctrine … it is illegal defiance of constitutional authority.”

Fans of nullification count on the states to check federal tyranny. But sometimes it cuts the other way; states are also tyrannical. Indeed, if state and local governments could invalidate federal law, Virginia would have continued its ban on inter-racial marriages; Texas might still be jailing gay people for consensual sex; and constructive gun bans would remain in effect in Chicago and elsewhere.

Finally, question #3: If a state deems a federal law to be unconstitutional, what’s the proper remedy? The answer is straightforward. Because the Supreme Court is the ultimate authority, the remedy is a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the suspect federal regulation or statute.

• Levy is chairman of the Cato Institute, http://www.cato.org.

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