But the California law involved isn't a law regulating commerce. It's a law regulating conduct (i. e., possession of a certain object) in California.
Well for starters, we have Title 29, or the National Labor Relations Board Act using this turn of phrase to describe
The US Government said:
the intent or the necessary effect of burdening or obstructing commerce by
among others:
The US Government said:
(c) materially affecting, restraining, or controlling the flow of raw materials or manufactured or processed goods from or into the channels of commerce, or the prices of such materials or goods in commerce; or
A state banning an object legal in many if not all of the other 49 states, especially with an incredibly high percentage of the population of the Unites States, is going to materially affect and restrain the flow of that manufactured good into the channels of commerce.
It is also materially affecting and controlling the price of those goods.
Here we have a California legal Colt LE6920MP-B for nearly $1300. And
Here we have the same rifle in a non-California Legal build for just under 1100.
In an NLRB case here
N.L.R.B. v. JONES & LAUGHLIN STEEL CORP., 301 U.S. 1 (1937) We get this little tidbit:
The Supreme Court said:
It is a familiar principle that acts which directly burden or obstruct interstate or foreign commerce, or its free flow, are within the reach of the congressional power.
The opinion is not "those acts
designed to directly burden or obstruct interstate or foreign commerce" but those acts which
DO so.
To further that line of argument, we can hop laterally to
Roe v Wade - there may be a better case to make my point, but this had a passage I was familiar with-
The Supreme Court said:
3. State criminal abortion laws, like those involved here, that except from criminality only a life-saving procedure on the mother's behalf without regard to the stage of her pregnancy and other interests involved violate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which protects against state action the right to privacy
These state laws were not designed to invalidate the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth amendment. However, the mere fact that they did was enough to rule them unconstitutional.
For more supporting arguments, I'd like to direct you to
Katzenbach v. McClung 379 U.S. 294 the companion case of
Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States 379 U.S. 241
Where the court states:
The Supreme Court said:
As to the Commerce Clause, the court found that it was
an express grant of power to Congress to regulate interstate commerce, which consists of the movement of persons, goods or information from one state to another,
and it found that the clause was also a grant of power
to regulate intrastate activities, but only to the extent that action on its part is necessary or appropriate to the effective execution of its expressly granted power to regulate interstate commerce.
And further, for regulating local activities:
The Supreme Court said:
5. The Power of Congress to Regulate Local Activities
Article I, § 8, cl. 3, confers upon Congress the power "[t]o regulate Commerce . . . among the several States" and Clause 18 of the same Article grants it the power [p302] "[t]o make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers. . . ." This grant, as we have pointed out in Heart of Atlanta Motel, extends to those activities intrastate which so affect interstate commerce, or the exertion of the power of Congress over it, as to make regulation of them appropriate means to the attainment of a legitimate end, the effective execution of the granted power to regulate interstate commerce.
From the Concurring Opinion in
Gibbons v Ogden 22 U.S. 1
. And since the power to prescribe the limits to its freedom necessarily implies the power to determine what shall remain unrestrained, it follows that the power must be exclusive; it can reside but in one potentate, and hence the grant of this power carries with it the whole subject, leaving nothing for the State to act upon.
