It's important to keep in mind that the US Constitution constantly, consistently and carefully refers to three, distinct entities:
1) US Government
2) States
3) People

Because the document was carefully drafted by intelligent people, you will interpret it incorrectly if you fail to recognize that nearly every word was carefully chosen for a particular reason. In other words, if you see the word "STATES" you can't read it to mean "people" or vice versa.

In this case, the so-called 'Interstate Commerce Clause' should be read VERY carefully in order to determine its meaning.

In sum, this section of the Constitution gives Congress the power to "regulate" "commerce" "among" the "several" "States." (We could write an article on EACH of these words.)

While all of these words must be carefully considered before one can reach a final conclusion, it's sufficient for this comment to simply note that the word "interstate" appears nowhere in the text and the word "people" appears nowhere in the text.

Keeping in mind that people are not States, this clause says that Congress can regulate commerce among the STATES – NOT the people. Restated: IF 2 or more STATES engage in Commerce, Congress can regulate it. That's it. This is FAR different from its current application and its why it's so darn frustrating to watch what passes for 'Constitutional Law' as developed by corrupt or stupid lawyers and judges.

Example #1: The States of Oregon, Idaho, Nevada and California make some power sharing agreement that qualifies as 'commerce.' Congress can "regulate" it.

Example #2: Bob, an Oregonian, sells a gun to Tom, a Californian. Congress has no power to be involved at all.

The really tricky part was when this clause was casually referred to as the 'interstate commerce clause' by legal "scholars." This misstatement of the clause has taken root and allows intellectually dishonest (or uneducated) people to claim that all trade that occurs between entities from different states can be regulated. That is simply NOT what the clause says. (Of course, Wickard v. Filburn just makes a complete mockery of the Constitution by asserting that ANYTHING can be regulated because EVERYTHING affects "interstate commerce" in some way – even if the transaction occurs COMPLETELY within the boundaries of a state or even if there is no transaction at all !!! It's simply stunning…)

As always, keeping in mind that the Constitution is an attempt to LIMIT government power, the clause allows Congress to regulate commerce between or among the STATES and that's all. Commerce (whatever that term means is not the subject of this post) between or among people residing in different states is not covered.

Since Congress has only the powers given to it by the Constitution, it has no power to regulate commerce among the people of the various states.

It's simply stunning to see the Constitution turned on its head time and time again. The drafters were so careful to make sure the power was contained and they predicted most of the crap that has occurred by power-hungry government officials over 200 years ago. Their words are clear and the history surrounding the Constitution is well known yet dishonest or stupid people continue to screw it up.

As with most issues that come up in interpreting the Constitution, it's pretty simple to resolve if you can read. It's only complicated when you try to make the document say something it doesn't actually say. That's what lawyers do. Some people call it 'looking for loopholes.' In thinking of lawyers, a different kind of HOLE comes to my mind!

Although the States don't necessary have to accept that constitution. Like in the original 1787 case if enough of them do then the rest are kind of in between a rock and a hard place, either accept it or get left out. Unless we have a very firm grasp upon what the vast majority of our sister States whom we do not wish to part with will do, a constitutional convention as previously demonstrated represents considerable risk.
Getting 2/3rd of the states to agree that this risk is worth it to overturn a signal court ruling, on top of getting 3/4th to agree on how to overturn that ruling is a challenge in the extreme.
Of course in my opinion at this point we really don’t have anything left in terms of practical constitutional protections to loses as the federal government has currently “decided to interpret” OUR constitution of powers, which is to say with no meaningful limits on their own powers.
But still that is the opinion of 1 man in 1 State, not yet the majority of men in 2/3rd of the States.
All of this being said we have as recently as the 1960’s come within 1 or 2 state short a Constitutional Convention over a few court rulings one of which was the one which striped out states of their meaningful senates(regional representation). So threshold of resistant to this option is not so high you might think.
In general If you accept that the U.S. Supreme court has the unilateral right to define the meaning of the United States Constitution, then it’s a lot easier for them to “rewrite” the constitution (as it requires only the consent of 5 federal employees in black robes)., then it is for we the people to fix it.(as it requires 3/4ths of the States to agree on how to fix it in addition to the need to fix it).
Much less 2/3rd of the states agreeing that the matter is significantly bad enough to warrant the extraordinary risks involved in a Constitutional convention, assuming congress like the new powers given to them by the court and won’t vote to proposes an amendment. (A Fatal flaw seeing as it took so many to consent to giving up only the limited power of the constitution in the first place, that it should take only so few to take even more and so few to prevent the rest of us from taking the power back.)

So to be frank there is either a fatal flaw in the Federal Constitution as to grant the federal court this power unilaterally rewrite the U.S. Constitution, or the court does not in fact have that power as was presumed to be the case prior to the “civil war”. This is why we argue for nullification and interposition rather then constitutional amendments, as nullification and interposition only requires 1 state to enact to protect its people’s rights and enforce the U.S. Constitution.