Missouri’s Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA) has secured another victory after the U.S. Department of Justice attempted to sway a Cole County judge with a statement of interest, according to media reports.
SAPA prevents local law enforcement agencies from enforcing federal gun laws.
“The Biden justice department knows no bounds of overreach that they will engage in under the guise of civil rights,” said Richard Manning, president of Americans for Limited Government, a civil liberties advocacy group.
“It is interesting that they are willing to go crazy in terms of imagined civil rights violations, and yet seek to impose real civil rights violations when it relates to the Second Amendment.”
In an Aug. 27 order, Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green denied a request from the DOJ to render SAPA null and void last week.
“A state judge has no choice but to follow state law because that's what they are guided by,” Manning told the St. Louis Record. “As a result, it would be surprising if the Cole County judge found anything but that the state constitution and state constitutional language was in fact inviolable.”
As previously reported, St. Louis and Jackson County sued as a way to block House Bill 85, also known as SAPA, by asking the court to declare it unconstitutional. But Green sided with Gov. Parson who signed the bill, making it law, on June 12 at Frontier Justice gun shop in Lee’s Summit.
“The state of Missouri has the prerogative of expanding beyond the Second Amendment for their own protections of their citizens’ rights under their state constitution and so I think the governor is 100% correct in saying that the people of Missouri are protected by the Second Amendment provisions in that state and the interpretation of those provisions,” Manning said.
A local Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) special agent submitted an affidavit to the court stating that SAPA had led state and local officers to resign.
“I have no problem with those people resigning because there is a line of people ready to fill their spots,” Manning added. “So, if you're going to resign based on this, I probably don't want you enforcing the law anyway because you want to interpret it to be something other than what the state constitution says it is.”