Edit: According to AI, I've got this a bit backwards. The ruling hits the taxing power, not the commerce clause. It's nonetheless interesting, since the machine gun ban may be affected.
The court says that you can't use a tax to ban something outright, which is what the post-1986 machine gun ban is: refusing to collect a tax on post-1986 machine guns, effectively banning them.
That leaves the commerce clause as the remaining defense for all taxes-as-bans or general outright bans. And that suggests future cases where Wickard will be under scrutiny.
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I am not a lawyer, but I think this ruling is far more interesting than it appears.
It is aiming a crosshair at Wickard v. Filburn, which ruled that a farmer that produced wheat on his farm to exclusively to feed livestock on that same farm was affecting interstate commerce, and could be penalized for overproduction to support price controls. Keep in mind, that this definition of "interstate commerce" is so broad that it essentially reduces the category of "intra-state commerce" to nothing, which seems dubious.
That ruling is the basis of a huge portion of the federal government's powers under the commerce clause of the constitution.
The supreme court will likely have to rule on this eventually, and how it threads the needle will be very important.
If Wickard were simply struck down, the U.S. would be reformed into a weak federation, akin perhaps to pre-EU Europe, where laws vary wildly between states, and the federal government has little power. No EPA, no federal minimum wage, no forced integration, reduced civil rights, only direct interstate commerce being regulated.
That's unlikely to happen, but the court would either have to reaffirm Wickard, or would have to come up with a new standard to keep, say, the $200 tax on pre-1986 machine guns effective (preventing a garage machine gun), but allow some notion of non-economic activity like home distilling to continue.
The OBBB reduced the tax on suppressors to $0, which strongly undermines the idea that home production of suppressors can be regulated by Wickard, since there is no tax interest to protect.
How it might affect the controlled substances act is more complicated, since there is no tax on illegal drugs, and the government has decided to entirely ban non-pharmaceutical street drugs, hence even "hobby" production clearly undermines that policy.
It's an area with lots of apparent but longstanding contradictions and questionable standards, but it would upend much of the New Deal to reverse it.
You’re confusing a few of the issues here. This isn’t an interstate commerce case, it’s a tax power case, which does reflect on the NFA but not on Wickard v Filburn or civil rights. The important aspects of federal civil rights law aren’t legally justified by the commerce clause either.
Though I would gladly see Wickard v Filburn overturned. Commercial regulations already vary by state, and the US would still be more cohesive than the EU is today, but the amount of water that flows through my showerhead doesn’t have to be a concern of the federal government. In fact, we don’t even need Wickard v Filburn to be a more cohesive federation than Canada, which doesn’t even have free trade between provinces.
Another quick look at your history also tells you why a strong federal government has downsides. Life is full of compromises, but I like me some subsidiarity.
I mean you said it yourself, it's a compromise. Giving the states free reign to terrorise their populations didn't work out so great. The relatively strong federal government of more recent times however seems to have worked out not so badly. Now there's a retarded paedohpile in office starting random wars and of course all bets are off. The US political system actually probably is quite shit, but I don't think it's about centralisation vs decentralisation, but electing an unaccountable king every 4 years is just a retarded and easily exploitable system.
> Giving the states free reign to terrorise their populations didn't work out so great.
Be careful not to be anachronistic. When the US was a young country, before telegraphs and railways were widespread, most people's primary interface with the government was perhaps their municipality or at the highest level perhaps their county.
> The relatively strong federal government of more recent times however seems to have worked out not so badly.
I am not so sure. Different people in different parts of the country have different preferences. Much easier to satisfy them, if you don't centralise too much.
> [...] but electing an unaccountable king every 4 years is just a retarded and easily exploitable system.
Much better to elect 3,143 kings, one for every county. If you don't like the one your neighbours (and you) voted for, just move to the next town over.
Moving counties is almost infinitely easier than moving countries, or replacing the entire federal bureaucracy to your liking (instead of the liking of that other guy).
Sorry, I couldn't even type it out it would seem, it was too silly.
Anyway, you sound like me when I was about 19, lots of abstract theories and ideas without any ties to the real world we find ourselves in. I don't regret it but I'm glad I grew out of it . It's not stuff to be taken seriously. All the best.
The court says that you can't use a tax to ban something outright, which is what the post-1986 machine gun ban is: refusing to collect a tax on post-1986 machine guns, effectively banning them.
That leaves the commerce clause as the remaining defense for all taxes-as-bans or general outright bans. And that suggests future cases where Wickard will be under scrutiny.
---
I am not a lawyer, but I think this ruling is far more interesting than it appears.
It is aiming a crosshair at Wickard v. Filburn, which ruled that a farmer that produced wheat on his farm to exclusively to feed livestock on that same farm was affecting interstate commerce, and could be penalized for overproduction to support price controls. Keep in mind, that this definition of "interstate commerce" is so broad that it essentially reduces the category of "intra-state commerce" to nothing, which seems dubious.
That ruling is the basis of a huge portion of the federal government's powers under the commerce clause of the constitution.
The supreme court will likely have to rule on this eventually, and how it threads the needle will be very important.
If Wickard were simply struck down, the U.S. would be reformed into a weak federation, akin perhaps to pre-EU Europe, where laws vary wildly between states, and the federal government has little power. No EPA, no federal minimum wage, no forced integration, reduced civil rights, only direct interstate commerce being regulated.
That's unlikely to happen, but the court would either have to reaffirm Wickard, or would have to come up with a new standard to keep, say, the $200 tax on pre-1986 machine guns effective (preventing a garage machine gun), but allow some notion of non-economic activity like home distilling to continue.
The OBBB reduced the tax on suppressors to $0, which strongly undermines the idea that home production of suppressors can be regulated by Wickard, since there is no tax interest to protect.
How it might affect the controlled substances act is more complicated, since there is no tax on illegal drugs, and the government has decided to entirely ban non-pharmaceutical street drugs, hence even "hobby" production clearly undermines that policy.
It's an area with lots of apparent but longstanding contradictions and questionable standards, but it would upend much of the New Deal to reverse it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wickard_v._Filburn