Plutonium? Weaponized plague? Explosives? Mercury? Cyanide? None of this is subject to regulation by the Federal authorities? What about enemy bullets? Are those subject to federal regulation? How about enemy soldiers? Are those subject to federal regulation?
Just how far do you want to go with this silly claim that the Feds can't interdict dangerous material and/or personnel?
How far do you go with the silly notion that arbitrary law is legitimate?
Because if such Tyranny is good for conservatives, then it's good for Leftists as well.
Crime exists when an individual—through force, fraud, or negligence—infringes on the rights of another—or is in imminent expectation of doing do (for instance DUI).
Preemptive law is the stuff of Tyranny, and once it is justified by one person or group, it can be justified by any person or group, and it automatically gives the State a situation in which there is no practical limit to its power—especially when such law becomes the purview of bureaucrats and the State's regulatory apparatus.
Contraband law is the height of Nanny-state Tyranny, and it cannot be justified as currently constituted. Once the State can go around deciding that this or that thing is banned because somebody might do something bad with it, there is simply no limit to the power which the State can possess—all in the name of protecting the People, or the Children, of course.
Nobody can fancy themselves a believer in minimal government who believes in such an arbitrarily expansive vision of State power. It's simply impossible; it's the slippery slope which invites Tyranny, emanating from an endless supply of Nanny-state do-gooders—such as women, when they got the vote in the early twentieth century. What quickly followed was Prohibition. That's right: because some husbands couldn't handle their liquor without abusing their wives, suddenly everyone who possessed alcohol was a State criminal. It is to laugh.
This is the kind of thinking which leads to smoking bans, and the diabolically twisted idea that the State can award itself the right to imprison a person simply for possessing the "wrong" one of God's own plants, or distilled spirits, or medicine.
Legitimate law exists only when it protects infringement of someone's rights—not when it acts as some kind of "prior restraint" founded in emotionalism and demagoguery.
Again, we saw crystal clear what such Law leads to during Prohibition. I won't recite the particulars, but they are well known and perfectly apply to the situation as it stands today with the phony War on Drugs. Not only was Prohibition completely impractical—it was immoral as well.
Christ—if he had wanted—could have easily made dogmatic pronouncements about alcohol, calling for its outright prohibition. But tellingly, he didn't. Indeed, he created a recreational drug with his very first miracle! And what was his admonition? That a person shouldn't be taken to too much wine; that drunkenness was a sin—not mere consumption of alcohol.
The same principle applies for all drugs.
Alcohol itself is, of course, a drug—a drug whose various evils inarguably exceed those of all other drugs combined. And yet Christ set the example of moderation—not prohibition.
The Prohibitionist Mind will engage in all sorts of somersaults in a furioua attempt to rationalize its Tyrannical shortcuts.
I will insist on actual Liberty—with all of its inconveniences, challenges and annoyances.
Contraband law is Tyrannical, and trying to create false equivalences with things like plutonium or shoulder launched nuclear projectiles can't change that fact. A Prohibitionist believes in putting someone in prison merely for possessing the wrong plant or medicine, and no amount of obfuscation will ever change the fact that such Law is inherently authoritarian, and—once justified—must open the door to an endless line of petty Tyrannies—to be imposed by one self-righteous group or another, whether on the Left or Right.
The State must have a compelling reason to even contemplate such law—not a casual or whimsical one—and only in the most extreme cases—such as the plutonium or ricin examples—can such a thing legitimately exist.
To rationalize the inherently unjust consequences of Contraband Law—threatening a person with a 10 year prison sentence for possessing a single pill, for example—is absolutely ludicrous and shameful, and anyone who supports such law can hardly consider themselves a "small government conservative"...