Confiscation has begun in Massachusetts!

[mrerick]

While I'm a life member of the NRA, and teach their safety programs, my experience within North Carolina has been that the NRA just hasn't been doing a good job in assisting with litigation or state house lobbying. They tend to become "friends" of those that are already deeply in the fight, often well after the NRA contribution to the effort would have mattered.

The ILA lobbyists also tend to dip into areas within which they don't have appropriate expertise. The Chicago McDonald litigation and the Washington Heller litigation were cases in point. Alan Gura spoke with our group (Grass Roots North Carolina) and told us that by the time NRA got involved, they waded into areas they didn't understand, and might have derailed the decisions. Full comments are here... Of course, when Alan won the suits, NRA tried to take a disproportionate amount of public credit.

In the past congressional election effort, NRA endorsed a 2nd amendment antagonist who had a worse record than the opponent, David Rouzer. Rouzer (top rated 2nd amendment candidate) may lose to McIntyre by only 600 votes.

At a state level, our lobbying effort hasn't gotten much support from NRA.

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On what Mass is doing here, the 10th amendment would seem to interfere with their actions. The amendment reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

But the second amendment clearly prohibits actions by states that result in infringement of the right to bear arms:

A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

So, interfering with the commerce in arms would seem to interfere with an individual right to acquire them so that a citizen could bear them....

I know... we're only a single supreme court justice away from losing in these areas...

MArc