The following is the personal opinion of a non-attorney, and although said person has stayed at a HolidayInn Express before, he has not done so particularly recently.
Idaho apparently(??) has a similar statute, though it must have been passed after I left. I _thought_ the argument for these statutes' validity is lack of federal authority. I further believe the argument goes along the lines of:
The federal government only has the legal or regulatory authority explicitly granted to it in the Constitution of the United States (including that granted indirectly). The commerce clause, as it is frequently called, is used to assert authority over LOTS of things not explicitly granted in the Constitution. Since there is nothing in the Constitution that comes remotely close to granting federal authority to legislate or regulate possession by individual citizens of pretty much anything at all, reliance for such authority comes from said other clauses, like commerce. There is a line of thinking that I've read or heard, many times, that if an item like a silencer is manufactured in a state and only offered for sale in that state, and so long as it always remains in that state, there can be no federal authority to declare it contraband. Perhaps I've misunderstood the general line of thinking, but I believe this is substantively what I've read and heard over time.
I _thought_ I'd read various SCOTUS decisions where they deal with the commerce clause in particular by determining whether there is a "nexus to" interstate commerce. I further thought I recalled reading about a decision related to firearms in particular?) wherein SCOTUS' reasoning went along the lines of... well, all the materials and machinery used to make said firearm came to that state in interstate commerce, and having huge in-state-only manufacturing and sales definitely significantly impacts interstate commerce, so there's the nexus to interstate commerce and thus the authority for the federal government to legislate or regulate. With that, then, I believe federal supremacy wins the day.
In short: I see these state statutes as pure political theater intended to incite and inflame (or perhaps mollify and pacify, I suppose?), but which have absolutely zero substantive value, meaning, or legal force.
Now all the ACTUAL attorneys on the forum can come in and correct all the things I recalled wrong or misunderstood or mis-read.
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