As Boulder mourns, the Arizona Legislature works to protect ... guns

Opinion: While the nation mourns not one but two mass shootings in a week, the Arizona Legislature is working on a bill that would offer broad protections. To guns, that is.

Laurie Roberts
Arizona Republic

In the wake of shootings that left a police officer and nine others dead in Boulder, Colo., Arizonans will be relieved to know that our state’s leaders are hard at work on a bill that would protect …

… The rifle used in Monday’s supermarket slaughter.

The alleged shooter, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, bought his AR-556 not even a week before the massacre, according to an affidavit unsealed on Tuesday.

A day after Monday’s mass tragedy, President Joe Biden repeated his campaign vow to ban assault-style weapons and high capacity magazines.

“This is not – it should not be – a partisan issue,” he said. “This an American issue. It will save lives, American lives. We have to act.”

Which is, of course, precisely what Arizona Legislature fears.

Bill creates a sanctuary for guns

Thus comes the Second Amendment Firearm Freedom Act, a bill that would transform Arizona into a sanctuary state. For guns, that is.

The bill has been proposed annually for the last several years, but it took on new urgency when Biden became president.

House Bill 2111 and its sister, Senate Bill 1328, declare that henceforth, the sovereign state of Arizona will ignore any federal gun restriction that our leaders don’t like.

Specifically, that any “act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation of the United States government that violates Amendment II of the Constitution of the United States is null, void and unenforceable in this state.”

Which is silly when you think about it, because any act, law, treaty, order, rule or regulation that violates the Constitution already is unconstitutional and thus cannot be enforced. 

In the United States of America, it’s always been the court system that is the arbiter of what is lawful and what is not, with U.S. Supreme Court getting the final word.

Lawmakers, not courts, get the final say?

A woman consoles a King Soopers pharmacy technician after a shooting at the grocery store in Boulder, Colorado.

Under this bill, the final word would go to … well, it’s not clear who it would go to.

The Arizona Legislature, I presume.

I suspect that any federal effort to strengthen so much as a single gun law would be a non-starter in this state. The bills would bar all cities, counties and state agencies from enforcing said federal law or even cooperating with the feds in enforcement efforts.

“If they try to take AR-15s from law abiding citizens, that is not going to be tolerated,” Rep. Leo Biasiucci, R- Lake Havasu City, said, during a February hearing on his HB 2111.

God forbid that the Proud Boys and such be prevented from strutting around town with Uzis tucked into their pants. That we try to prevent the sale of high-powered weapons to any Tom, Dick and Dirty Harry who wants one.

But what if Congress passes a red-flag law to try to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill?

What if, at long last, our leaders in Washington, D.C., muster up the courage to require that anyone who wants to buy a gun first undergo a background check? 

Or require a waiting period. Police say the suspect in last week’s Atlanta spa shootings, distraught about his sex addition, purchased his 9 mm handgun just hours before he shot and killed eight innocents.

What if Congress bans the sale of large-capacity magazines in a long-overdue effort to at least slow the large-capacity carnage that we have seen over and over and over again. And yet again. 

There would be a sizable amount of support for any of these ideas in Arizona.

Forget passing any gun law that might help

But under Biasiucci’s and Gowan’s bills, any such federal law or order would have to be run by some locally approved keeper of the Constitution.

Which likely means the Legislature.

Which certainly means you can forget about ever passing any gun law to cut down on lives lost.

And if any city defies that decree by actually obeying a federal mandate or cooperating with the ATF or any other federal authorities, then the wrath of the Legislature would rain down upon them. Under SB 1328, any “impairment of a citizen’s right to bear arms” would constitute a criminal offense.

The whole thing is, of course, a ridiculous overreaction by a bunch of politicians and their supporters who apparently lay awake nights worrying that Biden’s goons soon will be knocking down their doors to seize their arsenals.

They apparently forget that no president, no Congress – not even the Arizona Legislature, should it be so inclined (which it isn’t) – can take away your Second Amendment right to bear arms.

No right is unlimited, except in Arizona?

The U.S. Supreme Court has said so. But in writing that landmark 2008 decision, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia also noted this: “Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.”

“It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose,” he wrote.

Except, apparently, in Arizona, if the Legislature has anything to say about it.

HB 2111 already has passed the House and is awaiting a final vote in the Senate before it hits Gov. Doug Ducey’s desk.

I suspect the Legislature will hold off any vote on the gun-protection bills while America’s flags fly at half staff – for the victims of last week’s Atlanta spa shootings, that is.

The Boulder supermarket victims will just have to wait their turn.

Reach Roberts at laurie.roberts@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurieRoberts.

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