The federal government has no right to regulate guns made, sold and used within Utah, state lawmakers at a committee hearing decided Wednesday.
The Legislature's Natural Resources, Agriculture and Environment Interim Committee advanced a bill that its sponsor, Sen. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem, calls the "Firearms Freedom Act." If upheld in federal courts -- a big if, considering past rulings on states' rights -- Utahns purchasing Utah-made guns would not face federal requirements such as background checks.
"I love the idea of the firearms," said Sen. Allen Christensen, R-North Ogden, "and I love to swipe at the federal government on this one."
The bill taps the flip side of the Constitution's commerce clause, which the federal government used to impose civil-rights legislation, among other rules, on companies doing business across state lines. Modeled after a measure that Montana lawmakers passed this year, it asserts that the federal government lacks enforcement powers when no interstate commerce exists.
The bill would maintain a federal prohibition on machine guns, but otherwise would leave regulation of locally produced guns to the state. Perry Dayton, the senator's son and former intern who helped present the bill Wednesday, said there are a few gun makers in Utah, but "nothing on a real large scale."
As much as protecting Second Amendment rights to arms, Sen. Dayton said, her bill calls on the 10th Amendment's guarantee that states may exercise powers not prohibited by the Constitution.
Gun-control advocates say such laws would prove meaningless because federal authority was settled by the Supreme Court decades ago.
"This idea that you can just ignore federal laws is part of what the Civil War was about," Paul Helmke, Washington-based president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said in an interview.
It's odd that backers of states' rights chose gun laws to press their case, Helmke said. There are plenty of education laws they could challenge, for instance, but he said the only rules they might skirt with a gun bill would be background checks to keep felons and the mentally ill from buying guns.
"Do you want felons to have guns?" he said.
Rep. Rebecca Chavez-Houck, D-Salt Lake City, voted against the bill. She recommended Utah wait to see how Montana's law fares in court before inviting its own legal challenges.
"I'd like to have Montana pick up the tab on that one for the time being," she said.
Rep. Phil Riesen, D-Holladay, and Sen. Karen Morgan, D-Cottonwood Heights, joined her in casting dissenting votes.
Dayton said it's important for a groundswell of states to push the matter, possibly leading to a reversal by the Supreme Court.
