Confederate Heritage Month 2021, April 28: Nullification fever in Arkansas

"Look, it’s pretty basic. A large proportion of America’s rural white folks lost it over Barack Obama, and they ain’t come back yet. They thought Trump was going to return America to 1954, but now he’s gone, and they’re still hiding out in the woods."

So writes Gene Lyons in a column about the state of Arkansas' current effort to return to the Jim Crow era of white supremacy, Arkansas keeps trying to return to 1954 Chicago Sun-Times 04/16/2021

The column is in particular about legislation against transgender children. But he also cites a March anti-abortion bill and also an outright nullification bill against federal gun laws.

While none of those three actions have directly to do with race, they are actions aimed at challenging the authority of the federal government to protect the civil rights of people in the US from states violating them, and legislating a Christian fundamentalist version of so-called traditional values. But all of those are efforts to validate the same kind of abuse of state power to suppress African-Americans from voting and acting that were part of the original Jim Crow segregation system. And every Arkansas legislator and pretty much all their constituents know that.

As Austin Bailey wrote of one of the gun nullification bills as it was making its way through the legislature, "Anyone who has ever taken a United States civics class will recognize the unconstitutionality of the bill." (Arkansas senators declare federal gun laws null and void within state borders Arkansas Times 03/31/2021)

And he elaborates, "[this] audacious bill is a huge F.U. to the federal government, practically a declaration of secession. Its message essentially is that the guys in D.C. can take their laws and shove it."

Gene Lyons diagnosis of the nullification fad:

Arkansas legislators also have declared all federal gun laws null and void within the state, a direct challenge to the Constitution’s supremacy clause that is absolutely certain to fail. Serious gun nuts don’t care. They don’t expect to win. They just want their collective amygdala massaged — the fight-or-flight organ buried deep in the limbic brain.

Pretty much the reason they’re gun nuts to begin with.

See also: Andrew DeMillo, Arkansas lawmakers OK reworked bill that nullifies gun laws AP 04/28/2021;