State Senate passes gun law nullification bill

Nullification

In 1854, the Wisconsin Supreme Court became the only state high court to declare the Fugitive Slave Act unconstitutional, as a result of a case involving fugitive slave Joshua Glover, and Sherman Booth, who led efforts that thwarted Glover's recapture. Ultimately, in 1859 in Ableman v. Booth the U.S. Supreme Court overruled the state court.[6]

In November 1850, the Vermont legislature approved the "Habeas Corpus Law," requiring Vermont judicial and law enforcement officials to assist captured fugitive slaves. This law rendered the federal Fugitive Slave Act effectively unenforceable in Vermont and caused a storm of controversy nationally because it was a "nullification" of federal law, a concept that had become highly charged in debates over slavery. The famous poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier had called for such laws and the Whittier controversy heightened angry pro-slavery reactions to the Vermont law. Virginia governor John B. Floyd warned that nullification could push the South toward secession, while President Millard Fillmore threatened to use the army to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act in Vermont. No actual events followed in Vermont, but the rhetoric of this flare-up echoed South Carolina's 1832 nullification crisis and Thomas Jefferson's 1798 Kentucky Resolutions.[7]

"Jury nullification" took effect as local juries acquitted men accused of violating the law. Secretary of State Daniel Webster was a key supporter of the law as expressed in his famous "Seventh of March" speech. He wanted high profile convictions. The jury nullifications ruined his presidential aspirations and his last-ditch efforts to find a compromise between North and South. Webster led the prosecution when defendants were accused of rescuing Shadrach Minkins in 1851 from Boston officials who intended to return Minkins to his owner; the juries convicted none of the men. Webster sought to enforce a law that was extremely unpopular in the North, and his Whig Party passed him over again when they chose a presidential nominee in 1852.[8]

Legal battling and party organizing

Two days later Booth was arrested for aiding and abetting the release of a fugitive slave in violation of the Fugitive Slave Act. Rather than deny his role in inciting the mob action, Booth charged that the law was unconstitutional, and rather than see the rights of a trial by jury nullified he said he would "prefer to see every federal officer in Wisconsin hanged on a gallows." After such inflammatory rhetoric U.S. Commissioner Winfield Smith set Booth's bail at $2000, which his supporters paid immediately, freeing Booth to not only continue his battle against the slave law, but to again editorialize in favor of a statewide anti-slavery convention. Other state newspapers concurred, and on June 9 Booth called for a mass meeting on July 13 at the Madison capitol.[7]

Booth had surrendered himself back into federal custody so his lawyer Byron Paine could appeal for a writ of habeas corpus from the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The court, under Associate Justice Abram D. Smith, freed Booth, declaring that the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was not only unconstitutional, but "a wicked and cruel enactment."

(a) Any tax, levy, fee, or stamp imposed on firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition not common to all other goods and services which might reasonably be expected to create a chilling effect on the purchase or ownership of those items by law-abiding citizens;

(b) Any registering or tracking of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition which might reasonably be expected to create a chilling effect on the purchase or ownership of those items by law-abiding citizens;

(c) Any registering or tracking of the owners of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition which might reasonably be expected to create a chilling effect on the purchase or ownership of those items by law-abiding citizens;

(d) Any act forbidding the possession, ownership, or use or transfer of a firearm, firearm accessory, or ammunition by law-abiding citizens; and

(e) Any act ordering the confiscation of firearms, firearm accessories, or ammunition from law-abiding citizens

The NRA also came out against the legislation due to a proposed amendment. Anti-gun Senator Jamilah Nasheed added language requiring gun owners to report a stolen firearm to police no more than 72 hrs after the discovery of the theft. The NRA claimed the amendment also included penalties.

“Those who are unable to report a lost or stolen firearm within this arbitrary amount of time, would be subject to penalties including: a $1,000 fine, Class A misdemeanor and the loss of their Right to Carry Permit.”

But the actual text of the amendment included no such language. (read it here)