States’ Gun Rights: The Next Constitutional Battlefield
The Montana law was drafted by the Montana Shooting Sports Association, which has said it will support what it is likely to be a lengthy legal fight in the federal court system to affirm or strike down the law. Plans call for the association to find a pristine individual who will manufacture and sell 20 rifles without applying for a mandatory federal dealer’s license. The right to do so would be asserted in a letter to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Once a BATF response likely rejecting that claim is received, the association would seek standing in a Federal District Court to litigate its claim, experts say. (See pictures of evidence from the Columbine shootings.)
“It is part of the populist state-sovereignty movement, the sense there is so much power in Washington,” says Stephen P. Halbrook, a Virginia attorney who has argued several important Second Amendment cases before the Supreme Court, including, most recently, a successful case overturning the Washington, D.C., gun ban.