The bill is sponsored by South Carolina State Senators Bright, Bryant, Mulvaney, Davis, Shoopman, S. Martin and McConnell.  They join Montana, Utah, and Texas in an effort to limit federal regulation of guns, and specifically invoke the 9th and 10th Amendments as restrictions on federal power:

“the regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under the ninth and tenth amendments to the United States Constitution, particularly if not expressly preempted by federal law. Congress has not expressly preempted state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an intrastate basis of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition”

Read the full text of the legislation below:

A BILL TO AMEND CHAPTER 31, TITLE 23 OF THE 1976 CODE, RELATING TO FIREARMS, BY ADDING ARTICLE 9, THE “SOUTH CAROLINA FIREARMS FREEDOM ACT”, TO PROVIDE THAT A FIREARM, FIREARM ACCESSORY, OR AMMUNITION MANUFACTURED AND RETAINED IN SOUTH CAROLINA IS EXEMPT FROM FEDERAL REGULATION UNDER THE COMMERCE CLAUSE OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.

Whereas, the tenth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees and reserves for the states all powers not granted to the federal government in the Constitution; and

Whereas, the ninth amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees to the people rights not granted in the Constitution and reserves to the people of South Carolina certain rights. The guaranty of those rights is a matter of contract between the state and people of South Carolina and the United States; and

Whereas, the regulation of intrastate commerce is vested in the states under the ninth and tenth amendments to the United States Constitution, particularly if not expressly preempted by federal law. Congress has not expressly preempted state regulation of intrastate commerce pertaining to the manufacture on an intrastate basis of firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition; and

Whereas, the second amendment to the United States Constitution reserves to the people the right to keep and bear arms as that right was understood at the time that South Carolina was admitted to statehood in 1788, and the guaranty of the right is a matter of contract between the state and people of South Carolina and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by South Carolina and the United States in 1788; and

Whereas, Article I, Section 20 of the South Carolina Constitution clearly secures to South Carolina citizens, and prohibits government interference with, the right of individual South Carolina citizens to keep and bear arms. This constitutional protection is unchanged from the 1895 South Carolina Constitution, which was approved by Congress and the people of South Carolina, and the right exists as it was understood at the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by South Carolina and the United States in 1895. Now, therefore,

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of South Carolina:

SECTION 1. Chapter 31, Title 23 of the 1976 Code is amended by adding:

“Article 9

South Carolina Firearms Freedom Act

Section 23-31-700. This article may be cited as the ‘South Carolina Firearms Freedom Act’.

Section 23-31-705. For purposes of this article:

(1) ‘Borders of South Carolina’ means the boundaries of South Carolina described in Article I, Section 1 of the 1895 South Carolina Constitution.

(2) ‘Firearms accessories’ means items that are used in conjunction with or mounted upon a firearm but are not essential to the basic function of a firearm, including, but not limited to, telescopic or laser sights, magazines, flash or sound suppressors, folding or aftermarket stocks and grips, speedloaders, ammunition carriers, and lights for target illumination.

(3) ‘Generic and insignificant parts’ includes, but is not limited to, springs, screws, nuts, and pins.

(4) ‘Manufactured’ means that a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition has been created from basic materials for functional usefulness, including, but not limited to, forging, casting, machining, or other processes for working materials.

Section 23-31-710. (A) A personal firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in South Carolina and that remains within the borders of South Carolina is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

(B) This section applies to a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured in South Carolina from basic materials and that can be manufactured without the inclusion of any significant parts imported from another state.

(1) Generic and insignificant parts that have other manufacturing or consumer product applications are not firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition.

(2) Basic materials such as unmachined steel and unshaped wood are not firearms, firearms accessories, or ammunition.

(C) Basic materials are subject only to intrastate commerce regulation.

(D) Firearms accessories that are imported into South Carolina from another state and that are subject to federal regulation as being in interstate commerce do not subject a firearm to federal regulation under interstate commerce because they are attached to or used in conjunction with a firearm in South Carolina.

Section 23-31-715. This article does not apply to the following:

(1) a firearm that cannot be carried and used by one person;

(2) a firearm that has a bore diameter greater than one and one half inches and that uses smokeless powder, not black powder, as a propellant;

(3) ammunition with a projectile that explodes using an explosion of chemical energy after the projectile leaves the firearm; or

(4) a firearm that discharges two or more projectiles with one activation of the trigger or other firing device.

Section 23-31-720. A firearm manufactured or sold in South Carolina under must have the words ‘Made in South Carolina’ clearly stamped on a central metallic part, such as the receiver or frame.”

SECTION 3. This act takes effect upon approval by the Governor.

One of the stupidest attacks on advocates of the Tenth Amendment that I’ve recently seen was written by Brian Hicks and published in The (Charleston) Post and Courier on March 20. According to Hicks, South Carolina state legislators who are paying undue attention to the Tenth Amendment are “a bunch of guys obsessed with nineteenth century history” but “haven’t learned much from it.”

“The last time they got uppity and began mouthing off about states’ rights, we got our butts kicked.” Hicks goes on to explain that states’ rights really mean for most of its proponents the “race issue.”

And even before that became the case, according to one history professor at the College of Charleston, the term “has a tragic history in the life of our state. It harks pretty clearly to the nullification controversy. It began with the unsuccessful attempt of South Carolinian to resist the high tariff signed into laws by Andrew Jackson in 1832 and ended in disaster. The controversy dragged on for a couple of years, egged on by John C. Calhoun, until the state finally backed down.” But “resident busybodies didn’t shut up and kept fanning the flames until finally they just decided to secede. And we all know how that turned out.”

Yes, we all know how that turned out. Since the defeat of the secessionist South in 1865, the feds have been in charge of the military means of making any defiant state government compliant with its orders.

Therefore, it was only a matter of time before we reached our current condition, in which the states became only submissive tools for carrying out the will of a centralized federal administration (which in fact has no constitutional standing except as an indeterminate extension of executive power).

This, by the way, has nothing to do with defending the institution of slavery, which we are certainly well rid off. It’s about a growing federal bureaucratic dictatorship, which neither of our two publicly financed national parties is willing to touch.

For Hicks’s information, James Madison, one of the authors of the Constitution, defended the doctrine of nullification, most famously in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. The notion that state governments could “interpose” themselves between an odious federal law, as were the bloated tariffs of 1828 and 1832, and the citizens of their states has a pedigree going back to the late eighteenth century.

The authors of the Tenth Amendment clearly believed in the right of nullification, and if Jackson put down the resistance to it mounted by the residents of the seaport of Charleston, he did so by threatening military force. He was not making a constitutional argument of any kind.

There is one point on which Hicks may be correct, namely that South Carolina Republicans who are unhappy about usurpations of power under Barack Obama did not seem to care when “the last administration was stripping away all our constitutional rights with the Patriot Act.”

But there are two obvious responses to this partly justified charge. One, for many decades all kinds of supposed defenders of states’ rights have invoked this principle quite selectively. If New Deal-Great Society Democrats discovered the Tenth Amendment when they were opposing the racial integration of public and private institutions in Southern states, the putative allies of Mr. Hicks are at least as hypocritical when they scream states’ rights in order to allow gay marriage and the legal use of marijuana.

How can Hicks be so blind to the fact that it is liberal Democrats who are out in front in the hypocritical appeal to states’ rights on behalf of their socially liberal agenda?

Two, it is simply untrue that those who favor a new emphasis on the Tenth Amendment are all fans of the Bush administration and its liberal internationalist foreign policy. Certainly this judgment would not apply to Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin or the millions of followers of these recent presidential candidates.

The Constitution Party, the Campaign for Liberty and other groups that are part of the Tenth Amendment movement are overwhelmingly composed of critics of the Bush administration. While there may be GOP politicians who have climbed on board, most of the Republican supporters I’ve met do not strike me as stand-ins for Karl Rove and John McCain.

Moreover, it is possible that some Republican legislators did vote for the Patriot Act because they were genuinely concerned about national security after 9/11. This vote does not mean these legislators also favored a further extension of the federal administration into such domestic matters as social policy and taxation.

On the other side, however, are the assorted hypocrites in Hicks’ camp, who complain about federal surveillance in dealing with terrorism but who adore federal snooping to uncover “discriminatory” business practices and “gender-discrimination,” or to regulate the flow and direction of tobacco smoke.

Why is having the ATF or another part of the federal government control our smoking or hiring habits any less of a federal interference than the Patriot Act? The answer is of course self-evident. All forms of federal interference that serve the ideological ends of people like Mr. Hicks are perfectly acceptable.

Paul Gottfried is Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient. He is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and a contributor to Taki’s Magazine, LewRockwell.com and many other websites.  He is the author of eight books, with his most recent being Conservatism in America: Making Sense of the American Right (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007)