Replies

As for your gun, it was almost certainly manufactured out of state. Hence, the gun itself is within the definition of interstate commerce and would be under a strict sense of the commerce clause

HorseHillery. According to this case:

U.S. Supreme Court A.L.A. SCHECHTER POULTRY CORPORATION v. UNITED STATES, 295 U.S. 495 (1935)

the Supreme Court said that once the goods arrived in the destination state, the commerce was no longer interstate.Of course the court contradicted itself a couple years later to facilitate FDRs power grab and socialization of this country.Seems theose justices wanted to retain their seat at the table of power.

If a gun, sold new in a given state 30 years ago, is resold today in the same state, how is it still "in interstate commerce"?

According to this case: U.S. Supreme Court A.L.A. SCHECHTER POULTRY CORPORATION v. UNITED STATES, 295 U.S. 495 (1935) the Supreme Court said that once the goods arrived in the destination state, the commerce was no longer interstate.

I think defenders of the modern mangling of this clause place too heavy an emphasis on the fact that commodities and resources are completely entangled in interstate commerce "nowadays", as if that wasn't the case when the commerce clause was written. You'd think from some of these arguments that everything everybody needed or wanted was all manufactured in the same town, from resources mined or cultivated no more than ten miles away. Nothing could be further from the truth. There was constant trade going on all over the place.

Even before the white man came, there was a pretty extensive system of continental trade. During the colonial era, Americans were largely forbidden by Parliament from setting up manufacturing operations, thus making us dependent on England for manufactured goods. This dependency was lessened slightly after independence, and that really only began to change after the war of 1812. And all throughout that time, there was all kinds of trade up and down the coast.

So even back then, you could scarcely have gone into a store and bought any manufactured item that didn't have at least some parts manufactured out-of-state, or was built from materials that originated out-of-state, or had some other tangential relation to interstate or foreign commerce. And yet no one ever thought to consider it an act of "interstate commerce" to go down to the local store and buy something. So the "modern conditions" argument is largely bogus.

Schecter, of course, is no longer valid case law, or at least not valid in support of your assertions about the commerce clause. Due to many other cases -- Wickard v. Filburn especially -- Schecter is commonly explained today as correct in its outcome but not on its holding about the commerce clause. Schecter was correctly decided because of the arbitrary character of Roosevelt's NRA, which had excessive delegation by Congress and executive regulations with criminal force promulgated but not published so as to be widely available.

As for guns already manufactured, trade in those too can be considered to be under the scope of the commerce clause as a necessary incident to the federal power to regulate commerce. Colt, S&W, Glock, and the NRA argue energetically in favor of an expansive reading of the commerce clause when it comes to a federal liability shield law for guns. The Second Amendment is a far stronger protection in regard to gun rights than the commerce clause; and against anti-gun liability suits under state law, an expansive view of the commerce clause is a friend to the right to keep and bear arms.