US Appeals Court Rules Against Missouri’s ‘Second Amendment Preservation Act’

A federal appeals court on Monday ruled in favor of the Biden administration by scrapping a Missouri state law that declared several federal gun laws invalid. A three-judge panel of the St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Missouri’s bid to reverse a lower-court judge’s decision to bar the state from enforcing a 2021 law known as the Second Amendment Preservation Act (SAPA). U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes in 2023 declared the law unconstitutional. But Missouri, under Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, appealed the case. The decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) against the law, signed in 2021 by Republican Gov. Mike Parson after it was passed by the GOP-controlled state Legislature....