Even if one grants the legitimacy of the "substantial effects" clause (which I think is a crock), there is no way that someone's backyard pot plant or homemade machine gun can have "substantial effects" on interstate commerce. The justices so holding are being intellectually dishonest.
The federal government simply has no legitimate authority to regulate such matters. These sorts of things were wisely left to the states to regulate, and there frankly is nothing stopping the states from doing so.
The other option is to amend the constitution to authorize the federal government to do so. But the current dishonest method of simply inventing authority out of whole cloth tends to undermine the legitimacy of our government.
What about my private pilot example? He's free to fly wherever and whenever he wants, but when his flying has a "substantial effect" on the interstate commerce that Congress is regulating (ie., he gets in the way of a very big and very fast airplane), Congress has to power to tell him not to do that. You do agree, I hope.
"there is no way that someone's backyard pot plant or homemade machine gun can have "substantial effects" on interstate commerce"
Well, the courts have allowed Congress to view this as not just one pot plant or one machine gun but to consider the aggregate. It could very easily be pot plants in 10 million backyards, could it not? Now, couldn't some of those plants end up in interstate commerce? I mean, who would know? There's no way to determine if the plants are interstate or intrastate.
Normally, who cares? BUT, in this case, Congress is trying to regulate the interstate commerce of marijuana, and 10 million growers of fungible marijuana would have a substantial effect on their efforts.
Does it really have a substantial effect, or does Congress just think it might? The Raich court says it makes no difference.
"In assessing the scope of Congress' Commerce Clause authority, the Court need not determine whether respondents' activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a "rational basis" exists for so concluding."
We can wink-wink, nudge-nudge this all day, but you know as well as I do that this "backyard" pot would end up interstate. Plus, how long before we'd hear the argument, "Well if it's legal to possess it in my state, and it's legal to possess it in your state, it's really stupid and a waste of law enforcement's time and money to keep me from taking my legal product to your state."
You can hear that argument, can't you?
"The federal government simply has no legitimate authority to regulate such matters."
You can certainly make the argument that Congress shouldn't regulate such matters. But numerous courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have ruled that they can.
"These sorts of things were wisely left to the states to regulate, and there frankly is nothing stopping the states from doing so."
Well yeah, there is. IF Congress chooses to legislate, their law supercedes any state law to the contrary. This is covered under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
But, let's pretend. Let's say Congress repealed the Controlled Substances Act and allowed each state to regulate drugs however they saw fit to do so. Some states legalized marijuana, some states kept all drugs illegal, some state legalized all drugs, some states legalized marijuana and cocaine, etc. OK? Is this what you had in mind?
Would this work? What to keep the legal heroin in one state from getting into the adjacent states where it remains illegal? Who's to prevent the export of legal marijuana/cocaine/heroin in one state to another country (where it's illegal)?
A little history. Prior to Prohibition, about half the states banned alcohol in one form or another. There was such a problem with "wet" states smuggling alcohol to the "dry" states that those "dry" states asked the federal government for help. The Webb-Kenyon Act was passed making it a federal crime to do this. It didn't work. Finally, Prohibition came about, which solved the problem.
You don't think the same thing would happen with easy-to-smuggle drugs?
"The other option is to amend the constitution to authorize the federal government to do so."
Since the federal government has the constitutional authority to regulate drugs, an amendment would be required to remove this power. This was done with alcohol.
There is no "substantial effects" clause. That logic, and I use the term loosely, is a creation of the FDR era Supreme Court. The Congress was given the power to regulate Interstate Commerce, which means two things, an activity must be commerce in the first place, and secondly it must take place across state lines, that is be "interstate". Making your own machine gun, or growing your own pot, satifies neither of those conditions. The Court itself recognized this in US vs. Lopze when it struck down the Gun Free School Zones Act, on the grounds that local schools were not engaged in "interstate commerce", and thus Congress could not regulate their activities, directly at least.