The Missouri House passed a bill this week prohibiting state law enforcement agencies from enforcing gun-control laws passed by the Biden administration.
House Bill 85, dubbed the Second Amendment Preservation Act, would effectively invalidate federal laws or “other actions deemed to infringe on a person’s Second Amendment right to bear arms.”
It advanced to a final House floor hearing on Wednesday in a 107-43 vote that fell mostly along partisan lines.
A similar Second Amendment Preservation Act in the Missouri state Senate awaits a first floor hearing.
Introduced by state Sen. Eric Burlison, Senate Bill 39 would ban Biden from enforcing “gun bans directly, magazine bans, attacks on private gun manufacturers, red flag laws, and restrictions on individual citizens from buying firearms” in Missouri.
However, Missouri law-enforcement officials raised concerns about both bills, saying they could have potential ramifications on task-force collaborations with federal agents and grant funding.
“We need state laws that will make it easier to keep our communities safe, not those that have unintended consequences and silence law enforcement officials,” Greene County Sheriff Jim Arnott wrote in a letter to lawmakers asking them to vote against the gun rights bills.
The original House Second Amendment Preservation Act would have penalized individual law enforcement officers if they “knowingly enforce or attempt to enforce federal gun laws nullified in Missouri.”
Missouri Republicans added an amendment this week shielding law-enforcement officers from financial liability, but allowing those deemed illegally infringed to sue police departments.
With Republicans holding a 24-10 Senate majority and a 114-49 House advantage, the measure is likely to be adopted this year.
It will likely run into legal challenges, though, since the Supreme Court ruled in 1958 that federal law “can neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes.”
Democrat-run “sanctuary states” such as California enacted similar laws during the Trump administration that prevented local law enforcement and municipalities from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
