And you drug law reformers, you didn't listen very well either to our pleas to find common cause with the gun lobby. You dismissed us as bigoted rednecks.
Publicola pointed me to Says Uncle, who links to this petition by the Justice Department to reverse a Ninth Circuit ruling regarding home assembly of a full-auto firearm.
The petition says, in effect, that if the Federal government can legislate against private ownership of a home-made full-auto, they can legislate against simple possession of marijuana. The Federal government's lawyers are claiming that it is irrelevant that either the parts of the gun, or the seeds of the marijuana, were not transferred through interstate commerce---they have the power to pass and enforce legislation against it. The petition mentions a medicinal marijuana case and asks the Supreme Court to make a connection between their firearm case and the marijuana case:
"A holding that Section 922(o) is unconstitutional as applied to the possession of “homemade” machineguns raises an important issue that may ultimately warrant review by this Court. Plenary review in this case, however,
would be premature at this time. On June 28, 2004, the Court granted certiorari in Ashcroft v. Raich,
No. 03-1454 (to be argued Nov. 29, 2004), which involves an analogous as-applied constitutional challenge
to the Controlled Substances Act, 21 U.S.C. 801 et seq. Accordingly, the petition should be held pending this
Court’s decision in Raich and then disposed of as appropriate in light of that decision."
The Department of Justice agrees with us kooky libertarians that there is (at least one) limit to Federal power, that this one limit pertains equally to Federal firearm laws as well as to drug laws, and oh, by the way, they want to remove that limit.
I can see some relevance to the Betamax decision as well; more on that later.
They understand that these two issues are intertwined, that a Federal win on one will give them the framework for a win on the other.
Do you?
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