"Such a connection doesn't exist with aviation?"I'd be surprised if there wasn't.
"Are there court cases in which the feds have relied upon substantial indirect effects and aggregation to assert commerce power over aviation?"
Only if it was challenged.
Look. My point is that your private, non-commercial intrastate flying is only regulated when you're having a substantial effect on the interstate commerce that Congress is constitutionally regulating. The same is true for guns and drugs.
Excuse me for being blunt, but it appears to me as though your objection is personal, not constitutional -- you don't think Congress should be regulating guns and drugs.
Look. My point is that your private, non-commercial intrastate flying is only regulated when you're having a substantial effect on the interstate commerce that Congress is constitutionally regulating. The same is true for guns and drugs.
It could also be regulated as utilizing channels and instrumentalities of IC if you ask me. Aviation is just a bad example for this discussion.
Child labor laws, affirmative action programs, farm subsidy programs, many other subsidy programs, and yes, drugs provide better examples for a discussion of how interstate commerce power relates to guns. It's about so much more than guns and drugs for me. We've talked a little about Morrison in the past, and about then-judge Roberts saying indigenous California toads don't affect interstate commerce. Wickard has come up, and that's in part about farm subsidies, but many other subsidies also rely on commerce power. We talked quite a bit about assisted suicide and commerce power in the Oregon case. It's about the size and scope of the federal government for me, and I'm not the one to blame if gungrabbers follow in the legal trails blazed by drug warriors. I can't help it if
Raich decided Stewart. ;)
BTW, at the end of that revised opinion in the Stewart case, Judge Kozinski said this:
[8] 4. Stewart also contends that the Second Amendment guarantees him the right to possess machineguns, as well as the right to possess firearms generally despite his prior felony conviction. We previously held that this claim is squarely precluded by Silveira v. Lockyer, 312 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2002), and Raich did nothing to change that. See Stewart, 348 F.3d at 1142 (quoting Silveira, 312 F.3d at 1087).
Heller could do something to change that. We could find out whether regulating the possession of weapons by felons is OK under "strict scrutiny" and we could also find out whether the regulation of homemade machine guns under the commerce power withstands that test for non-felons.
The second amendment hasn't been an impediment to gun control. A favorable ruling could change that, and even an unfavorable one would likely generate some legislative response, as happened after the Kelo case, and would only ratify the current state of second amendment protection for the individual right to bear arms.