Feb. 11, 2010
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Feb. 8, 2010)

What’s made in Kansas…

If you thought that we’ve been needing a Kansas corollary to the late Charlton Hesston’s famous National Rifle Association speech in which he declared that the government can have his gun “when they can pry it from my cold, dead hand,” well, we’ve got one now.

Hesston’s speech was about gun registration and gun control, and a few Kansas legislators have come up with their own version.

It’s a bill that would flatly say that guns made in Kansas—as long as they stay in Kansas—are none of the federal government’s business.

“A personal firearm…that is manufactured commercially or privately in Kansas that remains within the borders of Kansas is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce,” says House Bill 2620.

The bill is another of those “10th Amendment”—reserving to the state all rights not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—measures. But there’s an interesting little twist to this legislation.

It’s a 9th Amendment tie-in.  Amendment No. 9, recall (or look it up), protects rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights. And the House Kansas-made guns bill links the 2nd (right to bear arms) with the 10th and the 9th by stating that Kansas lawmakers are going with the Bill of Rights and Constitution as it existed when Kansas entered the union in 1861—before there was federal registration of firearms or much in the way of federal supervision of interstate commerce. That leaves regulation of commerce just within the borders of Kansas pretty much up to Kansas, depending on your reading of the Constitution.

Now, it’s hard to figure out whether the bill is really about gun rights or gun manufacturing rights or just a constitutional-sounding argument that will play well among the new crop of activists which sprung up on parking lots last summer, but it’s an interesting little wrinkle for a piece of  Kansas legislation.

What’s in the bill?

Well, if you make a gun that can be carried by one person, has a bore diameter of less than 1 ½ inches (probably eliminating cannons that could shoot across state borders), or that fires shells that don’t explode when they hit, or machine guns, just stamp ‘em “Made in Kansas” and no nosy feds have to know about it.

This plays out a bunch of ways, doesn’t it? Kansas-made guns that stay in Kansas are essentially invisible to the federal—and state—government. Is it a way for a Kansas militia to arm itself against, well, we guess appraisers or illegal aliens or building inspectors or animal control officers? Who knows?

But it’s an interesting little piece of proposed legislation. Makes you wonder whether Kansas-made pharmaceuticals might be similarly exempted from federal regulation, or whether meat raised, butchered and eaten in Kansas ought also be exempt from federal inspection.

Makes the mind spin, doesn’t it? Maybe it could be a weekend drinking game: Think up what the federal government regulates that could be made, labeled as “made in Kansas” and consumed within Kansas’ borders that we’d just keep between us Kansans.