Governor Nixon has vetoed the bill saying Missouri does not have to obey any federal laws or regulations affecting firearms. Nixon says the so-called “Second Amendment Preservation Act” violates the United States Constitution and more than two centuries of United States Supreme Court rulings.
Nixon’s four-page veto message says the bill violates the federal constitution’s supremacy clause as well as freedom of speech and of the press. “An individual state is not empowered to determine which federal laws it will comply with, nor is it empowered to declare a federal act to be unconstitutional,” says the message.
The measure, which began as House Bill 436, was co-sponsored by Representative Doug Funderburk, a St. Charles electrical worker, and Speaker Tim Jones, who plans to run for Attorney General in 2016. It says the U. S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause does not apply to the enforcement of federal gun laws and regulations in Missouri and, further, said any federal official who tried to enforce any federal gun laws or regulations in Missouri could be arrested and jailed on a misdemeanor charge.
In his veto message, Nixon provides a lengthy legal history lesson that includes the Federalist Papers and the debates of the Constitutional Convention as well as Supreme Court rulings from 1803-2000–including an 1890 ruling that a state has no power to bring charges against a federal agency doing his or her duty. All of these things, he concludes, support the veto of a bill he says is “in multiple respects, constitutionally impermissible.”
The veto messsage:
http://governor.mo.gov/newsroom/pdf/2013/hb436veto.pdf
