North to the Future of the Right to Bear Arms: Analyzing the Alaska Firearms Freedom Act and Applying Firearm Localism to Alaska

• Main Author: Hill, John
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Duke University School of Law 2016
• Subjects: Law; Alaska law review; Alaska
• Online Access: https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/alr/vol33/iss1/6; https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1509&context=alr

The Second Amendment has gone from a rarely invoked constitutional provision to being one of the most hotly contested and politically charged protections of the Bill of Rights. Additionally, small government advocates have used local gun laws as a mechanism for challenging broad government regulation while conversely advocating for states’ rights, with Alaska recently joining a series of states seeking to expand local gun rights by passing state laws that nullify federal gun laws. Given Supreme Court case law and as demonstrated by recent Ninth Circuit precedent, the nullification course is almost certainly ill fated. Apart from the big government/small government proxy war being waged through local gun laws, others see the local, traditional character of the right to bear arms in a particular place as the most appropriate manner for scrutinizing regulation, given Supreme Court precedent and historic tradition.