Guns

The Second Amendment is Sacrosanct. The First? Not So Much.

This goes beyond the fruitless endeavor of preemptively nullifying federal law to banning proposals for new laws.

Yesterday, Missouri state Rep. Mike Leara (R) proposed legislation making it a felony for lawmakers to so much as propose many bills regulating guns. Leara’s bill provides that “[a]ny member of the general assembly who proposes a piece of legislation that further restricts the right of an individual to bear arms, as set forth under the second amendment of the Constitution of the United States, shall be guilty of a class D felony.”

As ThinkProgress points out, this would be unconstitutional under the Missouri Constitution in addition to the United States Constitution, with the latter being more obvious.

But, you know, I’m sure Mike Leara is a strict constitutional “originalist” at heart.

Missouri State Rep. Mike Leara