This may be the stupidest thing the left side of our political spectrum has come up with since some genius coined the slogan “defund the police”.
Home to some of the nation’s strictest gun laws and some of its largest gun manufacturers, Massachusetts has its fair share of firearm contradictions. Democratic state lawmakers are now taking aim at one of them, proposing a bill to ban the manufacture of certain kinds of firearms unless they are intended for sale to the military or law enforcement. That would keep Massachusetts-made assault weapons out of the hands of private citizens.
It would appear to be a crystal clear violation of the commerce clause, and if it’s not, the net effect would be to drive a major employer out of Massachusetts to another state that would be more than happy to let it export its guns to anyone who wants to buy one.
The argument for constitutionality, such as it is, would apparently be that Massachusetts is not interfering in interstate commerce because it is not forbidding the sale of a commodity across interstate lines, it is, rather, forbidding the manufacture of a commodity intended to be sold across state lines.
I really doubt if you could have sold that argument to a judge even before the courts were packed with right wing stooges, but it would go nowhere now.
Charlie Baker will probably veto the bill if it’s passed, and for once he’d be right. Why waste taxpayer money defending a losing cause in court? Then again, he might sign it, so the Republicans could make an issue out of the Democrats trying to drive a major employer out of the state. These sort of gestures make no sense. Like the “defund the police” slogan, they almost seem designed to turn off persuadable voters while doing nothing to advance the cause they claim to want to further. The only concrete thing this would accomplish is putting the employees of Smith and Wesson at risk of losing their jobs.
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