After another mass shooting, President Biden now calling to tighten gun laws. I don't need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take common sense steps, I'll save the lives in the future. Nullifying unconstitutional federal laws is both legal and it's also the right thing to do. It's clear as day that a lot of the gun laws that are being debated now would totally infringe the second amendment. It could be decades before the Supreme Court makes its mind up. It's silly to sit around and wait for something you know is unconstitutional. It's time to stand up and fight back and the methods that we need to use are the ones already being used by the Left. In 1987, Oregon passed a law prohibiting state and local law enforcement from using public resources to arrest or detain people whose only crime was being in the country illegally. Since then, hundreds of other jurisdictions have passed similar laws, becoming what's known as sanctuary cities. There's a new movement among conservative gun rights activists to employ the same strategy. Lawmakers have introduced bills in more than a dozen states that would nullify federal gun control laws. On April 6th, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signed a gun control nullification bill into law. Montana and West Virginia's legislatures have each approved bills that are now awaiting signature or veto from their governors. The Arkansas Senate and the Missouri and South Carolina houses have each passed such bills and committees in Texas, Alabama and New Hampshire have bills that are moving forward in their state legislatures. And similar bills have been introduced in Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Minnesota, Ohio, Nebraska, Iowa and Louisiana. James Madison in Federalist 46. He told us what needs to be done by individuals, cities and states to defeat federal programs without relying on the federal government to limit itself. He said specifically a refusal to cooperate with the officers of the union. This is how you defeat the feds, whether it's an unconstitutional act or if you just don't like the policy. Michael Bolden is the founder and executive director of the 10th Amendment Center, based in Los Angeles. He studies and advocates for nullification of all kinds of federal overreach. We know this stuff has been working and the right can continue to complain about the things that the left is successful at, or they can look at it, learn from it and replicate it. I think the strategy is there, the strategies know, it's just time to execute. Florida State Representative Anthony Sabatini is a co-sponsor of House Bill 1205, otherwise known as the Second Amendment Preservation Act. It prohibits any employee of the state of Florida from enforcing or attempting to enforce any federal act, law, executive order, administrative order, court order, rule, regulation, statute or ordinance and fringing on the right to keep and bear arms as insured by the Second Amendment. If the bill passes any state employee that assists in enforcing federal gun control laws would be permanently terminated. Defying federal law is something that the majority of states already do in one way or another, in the form of becoming immigration sanctuaries, or through the legalization and decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs. Well, in terms of the method, it's identical what you're doing is basically saying we as a state are not going to do anything to assist in the enforcement of this unconstitutional law. So in that sense, the method is exactly the same with marijuana, certain drug laws. Basically, they just stood down, they stopped cooperating, and what you saw was sanctuary cities was the same thing. They stopped reporting to and dealing with ice, and that's basically what we're doing. The federal government is so big today that it can't enforce pretty much anything without the help of state and local law enforcement state agencies and the light. And when you opt out of enforcement, it renders that nearly impossible to enforce. The ATF only has about 5,500 employees for the whole country. About a third of them are an administration, and that means they don't have the manpower or resources to enforce federal gun control on their own. Their maximum capacity year in and year out is between 8,000 and 10,000 close cases. So if you get a combination of more than 10,000 people violating a federal act, and then on top of it you have states and local communities refusing to participate in enforcement, you then open the door to actually nullify that federal act in practice and effect. Bowden says that the legal case for nullification doesn't depend on the constitutionality of a law that a state wants to nullify, thanks to a legal doctrine known as anti-comment hearing, which has been upheld in five Supreme Court cases stretching from 1842 to 2018. It states that the federal government can't require states and localities to participate in the enforcement of federal laws. Talking about constitutionality actually does kind of get in the way of anti-comment hearing, because you don't actually have to address the constitutionality of something to say you're not going to participate. A lot of people like that as a line in the sand, and I think that's a good approach, but I don't think they should be helping enforce federal gun control, even if a federal court says this federal gun control measure is constitutional. In March of 2018, when the Trump administration was fighting with local officials over the enforcement of federal immigration laws, John Bolton challenged the concept of nullification in an interview with Brightbart News Daily. The idea that law enforcement at lower levels shouldn't be required to cooperate with the feds is just unthinkable. That was also proposed by South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun before the Civil War to say that South Carolina and other slave states would not enforce federal law on regarding slavery. People will use that line if they just don't like the policy, and of course some people will just fall in line and say, well, that's evil and racist. But the bottom line is nullification as a tool. Banning participation and federal enforcement was actually a tool of the anti-slavery abolitionist north. And when South Carolina seceded in same with Georgia and Mississippi, and I think Texas as well, they issued a document to explain their rationale, and they specifically cited Northern nullification of the federal fugitive slave act. Sabatini says the nullification bill he's sponsoring is popular among voters, which doesn't necessarily mean it's likely to pass. I know that at the grassroots level and throughout the state of Florida, this is one of the most popular bills filed in the session this year, if not the most popular bill. But you really never know what the chances are in the legislature. In other states, law enforcement groups like the Sheriff's Associations in Montana, Wyoming, and Missouri have worked to prevent these laws from passing, or to change language in the bills to render them effectively useless. Bolden says police departments want to continue enforcing federal law because it's lucrative. In Missouri, one of the biggest reasons that Sheriff's Association is against it is they want to be able to use federal gun charges as leverage for marijuana violations or other drug war issues. And so if you get caught by cops and you've got a gun, they're going to say, you know, turn over your friends, or you're going to get an extra five, or an extra two, or an extra 10 years under a federal gun charge, and they want to be able to continue that. They get all kinds of funding for the joint task forces through the Department of Homeland Security grant, the Edward Bern Justice Assistance grant, they get civil asset forfeiture. I think that is probably getting the way. I don't think they'll admit that they're getting a bunch of loot to do this federal enforcement for them, but they certainly are. Bolden says that for the nullification movements to succeed against gun control laws and beyond, more Americans will have to recognize that the most effective way to oppose federal policies that violate their rights is at the local level. The whole idea of federalism is so important because it's the only way you can have a country with a few hundred million people living together with a wide range of social, economic, political viewpoints together in peace. What's right for people in California is probably not right for people in South Carolina and vice versa. And when we see things that come down from a one size fits all centralized solution, I don't think anyone really ever gets what they want. And that's why this kind of movement I think is so important. When you reject a federal centralized approach and you start taking your own view locally or on a state level, we see how things can grow. And that's exactly what's happened now with 36 states, define Washington DC on a plant. And I think we can replicate that on other issues and learn that localism is really the way forward for liberty.