Quote of the day—Brian Nieves

We continue to see the federal government overreach their rightful bounds, and if we can create a situation where we have some unity among states, then I think it puts us in a better position to make that argument.

Brian Nieves
Missouri State Senator
January 12, 2014
Lawmakers Plot New Strategy for Defying Gun Laws
[Nieves is talking about gun laws and is criticized by people because “state law does not trump Federal law”. But the same tactic is working with marijuana laws. And if enough states support trimming back the power of the Feds then it also means amendments could be made to the U.S. Constitution.

A friend, Jim G., once suggested an extremely minor change would fix a lot of problems. I’m not convinced it would be best change but it wouldn’t take a lot to convince me it would be better than what we have now. He suggested adding a period after the fifth word of the First Amendment.—Joe]

Share

8 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Brian Nieves

  1. Federal law only trumps state law when the federal law in question is permitted by the Constitution. That’s only the case for, maybe, one percent of federal laws.

  2. People forget the feds don’t have the resources to enforce their laws everywhere without the help of state and local law enforcement. If the states refuse to help, the federal laws are effectively null and void.

    • The downside to that is then they can plead “lack of resources” and quite deliberately go to selective enforcement, only expending limited resources going after “troublemakers” and “enemies” to “make examples of,” while willfully turning a blind eye to their supporters. That leads to worse problems than uniformly applied bad laws, because it actively supports and condones corruption, and turns honest people into chumps while rewarding the corrupt.

      • I don’t disagree with your assessment, because concentration of force is how wars are won. I do wonder, once the Feds go to selective enforcement as you describe, how the lickspittle lackeys of the press will hide it for long from the low information voters who vote by brand.
        And once THEY notice the “unfairness”, what will happen then?

        • Your question answers itself: “low-information voters who vote by brand.”

          With a complicit media feeding those LIVs all the biased and skewed information they think they’ll ever need, the probability of the LIVs ever noticing the “unfairness” approaches zero, and no matter how bad it gets, as long as they aren’t directly affected (and sometimes even if they are) they’ll continue to blindly vote their brand.

          Remember, these are people who think Piers Morgan makes rational arguments against AR-15s, who think Jay Carney and Chris Matthews tell it straight when describing Obama and Congress, and who think Fox News is a Republican propaganda machine while “Meet the Press” is straight news. Sorry, but I have little faith in their willingness and ability to see selective enforcement in the first place, let alone realize it’s a bad thing and act on that realization.

        • Answer: It would be considered a feature. Not a bug.

          I know a hard-core Democrat that wouldn’t see the problem with laws only being enforced against Republicans. “They have it coming!”

Comments are closed.