“Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is speaking out against a new Missouri law meant to protect the rights of the state’s gun owners. He and a number of Missouri police, sheriffs, and prosecutors say the Second Amendment Preservation Act makes law enforcement think twice about cooperating with agencies like the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, to investigate crimes involving guns,” reports CBS News.
“Local law enforcement agencies have long depended on the federal government for extra manpower, superior forensic technology and stiffer penalties for those found guilty of serious crimes. Now representatives of these agencies say the new statute leaves members of Missouri law enforcement vulnerable to civil lawsuits and $50,000 fines for working with federal agencies.”
“Missouri’s homicide rate is already nearly twice the national average, and as Norah O’Donnell reports, some Missouri law enforcement officials, especially in the southeast part of the state, have essentially stopped working with their federal counterparts for fear of the law’s possible consequences.”
Ironically, the new bill could end up being the over-reach that turns law enforcement away from supporting the Republican Party. Many of our nation’s police officers are already put off by the support that many Republican lawmakers give to the insurrectionists who stormed the US Capitol building on January 6th. There is a widespread belief that vaccine mandates in many of our nation’s police departments have helped to reduce the number of our nation’s officers who are far right ideologues and conspiracy theorists. In fighting against this new law, Police Departments may have to seek the help of Democratic lawyers, who are willing to file suit against the State of Missouri, and take on the National Rifle Association and the Federalist Society in our nation’s court-rooms, something that most GOP lawyers simply will not do.
Story update: The full text of the bill is available here. If we had a Supreme Court that ruled according to law, rather than per the dictates of Federalist Society donors, then this bill would be immediately struck down for violating the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and the National Firearms Act. Given that the National Rifle Association was involved in drafting model legislation for this bill, and that the National Rifle Association is tied to the Federalist Society as they are both organizations that are funded by the Council for National Policy, and that the Council for National Policy is a political advocacy organization created for the express purpose of advancing a political agenda, any litigant that appears before the Supreme Court should request that all justices who have maintained formal ties to the Federalist Society for any period during their career should recuse themselves from the case, so as to avoid creating a public impression that those justices are political operatives who were placed on the court for the purpose of advancing a particular political agenda, rather than neutral arbiters of the law.