Commerce is the trading of something of value between two entities. That "something" may be goods, services, information, money, or anything else the two entities consider to have value. Commerce is the central mechanism from which capitalism and all other economic systems are derived. The process of transforming something into a commercial activity is called commercialization.
Economic activity is not synonymous with commerce. And this is where the Court has gone wrong, starting with
Wickard v Filburn.
I would view a law to mean what it meant at the time it was written. Ah, but the meanings of words change, therefore the meaning of the law changes, some would argue.
Emphatically not. When the law is made, it is set into concrete. Whatever changes in the language may occur, the law itself does not change. It means what it meant at the time it was written.
With the current expansion of the meaning of the Commerce Clause (the capstone of
Raich), there would never have been an amendment (the 18th) to prohibit the manufacture or consumption of alcohol. This is not only the difference between what the clause meant, but what the "new" meaning entails today.
But regardless of what I think, what does the author of the Constitution think?
For a like reason, I made no reference to the "power to regulate commerce among the several States." I always foresaw that difficulties might be started in relation to that power which could not be fully explained without recurring to views of it, which, however just, might give birth to specious though unsound objections. Being in the same terms with the power over foreign commerce, the same extent, if taken literally, would belong to it. Yet it is very certain that it grew out of the abuse of the power by the importing States in taxing the non-importing, and was intended as a negative and preventive provision against injustice among the States themselves, rather than as a power to be used for the positive purposes of the General Government, in which alone, however, the remedial power could be lodged. James Madison to Joseph C. Cabell, Letters 4:14--15, 13 Feb. 1829
If we don't like what the Constitution says, there is a tried and true method of changing it. What we don't do is to change the law by applying todays "newer and better" definitions of words to effect that change via the Judiciary.
Since the late 30's and early 40's, the Supreme Court has expanded this definition and therefore increased the Powers of the Legislature, all without the proper means of amendment.
The Constitution is a "living" Constitution only in as much as it is changed by amendment. This is why we need strict construction of what the document menas. Else the words within it have no real meaning other than a fleeting menaing as times and definitions change.
Now that I'm done ranting, we must remember that the NFA of 1934 was a Tax Law. At that time, the Commerce Cluase could not have been used. It wasn't until the Commerce Clause had been expanded out of all recognition, that it was the primary vehicle for the GCA of 1968 and most all of the regulations since 1968. None of this could have been done had we stuck to what the Commerce Clause was supposed to have meant.
