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Missouri AG Eric Schmitt defends new law declaring federal gun laws “invalid”

File photo

Missouri officials pushed back Thursday at the U.S. Justice Department’s challenge to the constitutionality of a new state statute prohibiting local police from enforcing a variety of federal gun laws.

The department wrote Wednesday to Gov. Mike Parson and Attorney General Eric Schmitt warning that the measure “conflicts with federal firearms laws and regulation” and threatens the federal government’s working relationship with local police, the Associated Press reported.

In response, Schmitt, a Republican running for the U.S. Senate in 2022, and Parson accused the Biden administration of trying to “tell Missourians how to live our lives.”

“Missouri is not attempting to nullify federal law,” Schmitt and Parson wrote Thursday to Brian Boynton, acting assistant attorney general. “Instead, Missouri is defending its people from federal government overreach by prohibiting state and local law enforcement agencies from being used by the federal government to infringe [on] Missourians’ right to keep and bear arms.”

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A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice declined to comment.

Parson signed the Second Amendment Preservation Act into law Saturday at a Lee’s Summit gun store, marking a victory for conservatives and gun rights advocates who have tried for nearly a decade to pass the legislation. They pushed for the law with renewed vigor this year amid Biden’s calls for stricter gun control at the federal level.

The law declares many federal gun regulations, including those that covering weapons registration, tracking and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders, “invalid” in Missouri.

Local departments are barred from enforcing them, or risk being sued for $50,000. They also are prohibited from assisting federal agents in enforcing laws declared “invalid” and from hiring former federal agents who had enforced them. There are exceptions for cases in which the federal agents are enforcing gun restrictions that also exist in Missouri law.

Democrats and gun control advocates argued during the legislative session it would violate the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause. In Boynton’s letter, the Justice Department told Parson and Schmitt the clause supersedes state law.

But Missouri officials wrote they have “every right under our system of government and the Tenth Amendment to place limitations on what state and local officials may do.” The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says that powers not specifically granted to the federal government reside with the states and the people.

He accused the Biden administration of being hypocritical by overturning a Trump administration directive to withhold federal grants from cities and states that direct their police not to assist federal agents to apprehend immigrants.

“You cannot have it both ways,” Schmitt and Parson wrote.

Parson’s signing of the law has caused Missouri law enforcement agencies to evaluate agreements with federal agents that police often enter for complex investigations involving drugs, illegal firearms or human trafficking.

The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department appeared this week to have temporarily withdrawn its officers from federal task forces in the wake of the new law.

“We have withdrawn all of our department members from the federal task forces and have made the Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri aware of our actions,” spokesman Sgt. Keith Barrett told The Star on Tuesday evening.

Half an hour later, he wrote that the department had reversed course: “Effective immediately all of department members will return to their assignments assisting our federal partners.”

“The legal implications surrounding this legislation are evolving and we may make adjustments accordingly,” he added.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri declined to comment.

Federal task forces that the St. Louis police department participates in include the Gateway Strike force led by the DEA, which is focused on drug trafficking, and federal prosecutors’ Operation LeGend aimed at violent crime that began in Kansas City last summer.

Kansas City police have declined to comment on the impact of the law on its operations, but Captain Leslie Foreman said Thursday that “nothing we have been made aware of will change.”

“We will continue to work with our federal partners as we have in the past,” Foreman wrote.

The Star’s Bryan Lowry contributed reporting.