Inside Missouri’s ‘2nd Amendment Sanctuary’ Fight
A new law puts Missouri at the vanguard of states challenging federal authority on guns. It began as a backlash, and it has set off another.OZARK, Mo. — Brad Cole is a fiery defender of the Second Amendment, a set-jawed lawman with a lacquered alligator head on his desk, a Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum on his hip and a signed picture of himself with former President Donald J. Trump on his office wall.
Sheriff Cole, of Christian County, considers himself part of the constitutional sheriff movement, which contends that the federal government is subordinate to local authorities in most law-enforcement matters. Yet this year he found himself in the unusual position of pushing back against Republican state lawmakers ramming through a bill to punish local departments for collaborating with federal authorities on gun cases deemed to be in violation of Second Amendment rights.
“Anytime you take away a tool from us to do our job and protect the people we serve, well, I’m going to have a huge problem with that,” said Sheriff Cole, a Republican who worked with several other sheriffs from deep-red southern Missouri to modify the bill before it passed in May on a party-line vote.
“It’s just a terribly written law,” he said.
Even with the changes, the Second Amendment Preservation Act represents a challenge to federal authority that Biden administration officials and other critics see as a clear-cut violation of the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which prohibits states from passing laws that nullify federal statutes.
Last month, the Justice Department filed an affidavit supporting an effort by the city and county of St. Louis to strike down the law in state court, saying it had already hamstrung weapons and drug investigations. The judge in the case recently rejected a request to keep the law from going into effect, and, in response, Attorney General Merrick Garland is considering a federal lawsuit, according to two administration officials.
At the heart of the law is an audacious declaration — that all state firearms laws “exceed” the federal government’s power to track, register and regulate guns and gun owners.
The law, however, is as vague as it is expansive: Its authors did not focus on any specific federal law or policy, and state officials say they will not try to stop federal agents from executing raids, conducting background checks for gun buyers or enforcing existing laws, like the prohibition on gun purchases by felons.
But the law features a provision, the first of its kind in the nation, that allows Missourians to sue local law departments that give “material aid and support” to federal agents — defined as data sharing, joint operations, even social media posts — in violation of citizens’ perceived Second Amendment rights.
The law’s sponsors say that mechanism is protective and proactive, intended to counter Democratic gun-control efforts, especially President Biden’s attempts to ban semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. As one of its co-authors, State Senator Eric Burlison, put it, the bill was intended to tell Democrats considering new restrictions to “pound sand.”
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Inside Missouri’s ‘2nd Amendment Sanctuary’ Fight (Published 2021)
A new law puts Missouri at the vanguard of states challenging federal authority on guns. It began as a backlash, and it has set off another.