Brooks Lyman (mail):
Kevin P.
A bit off-topic, but all firearms are apparently considered to have "traveled in interstate commerce" which is the justification for federal laws relating to the sale of firearms, Federally Licensed Firearms Dealers, Instant Check and the whole nine yards.
When one considers the (very real, happens every day) possibility of Smith and Wesson, in Springfield, MA manufacturing a handgun and selling it to Camfour, a distributor in Westfield, MA who then proceeds to sell it to Roach's Sporting Goods in Cambridge, MA who then sells it to a licensed citizen of Massachussets (names of companies are real, for example only), one has to ask where the "interstate commerce" is....
As I understand it, the excuse (apparently legal and Constitutional, but really thin to my mind) is that, well, the steel that the handgun was made out of came from Michigan (interstate commerce) and the walnut wood the grips were made from came from California (interstate commerce) and so forth.
With this sort of thinking, how do we have any state's rights and valid state laws at all? And, given that there have been a few reversals of this sort of abuse of the Commerce Clause, one wonders whether this particular issue (that guns are considered to be in interstate commerce whether they actually have been or not) would pass muster before the Supreme Court today.
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