VikingsGuy
Well-known member
The 10th amendment is only the thinnest of protections from Fed - incredibly few laws have been found to violate in the last 75 years - it is nearly non-existent legally. But does still have some political/social sway/persuasive value and the feds do at times leave decisions to the states - but not out of fear of the 10thA.
As for the constitution as a whole, it is only a barrier to restrictions on speech, firearms, and anything else if the majority of the public agrees with the point. If 70% of society wants personal firearms gone, SCOTUS will not stop that outcome over time. Hell, SCOTUS let us own other humans as personal property when it was popular to do so. All you have to do is say the 2A is for the national guard only or that even if private the 2A is governed by the "rational basis" test which means any but the most arbitrary gun law would be "constitutional" - the opinions have already been written by 4 of the 9 justices.
From my perspective, the biggest problem is that to go much beyond our current state (where rural states are lax and urban states are working towards European style regulation and the SCOTUS split 4-4-1) will require a political/social/cultural upheaval on the order of Prohibition, the "War on Drugs" and its tag-along "incarceration state". And those did not go well. They solved nothing but did manage to turn law-abiding citizens into criminals while emboldening hardened criminals and gangs. I will say it again, we need to get off the Bloomberg rhetorical wagon and start putting our passions, energy, and dollars into the much bigger problems ahead - medical care, immigration, gang violence (the real causes), mental health system, education reform, federal budget deficits, the graying of our nation, etc. But those are complicated, lack the immediate 24-hour news cycle fodder, and seem to be too distant to rally suburban soccer moms. So gun control is the highlight - metaphorically Nero's fiddle.
