If Charleton Heston had lived in Massachusetts, then his rousing warning regarding his right to gun ownership would have read: “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead lockbox!” A case challenging the law in Massachusetts requiring that “stored firearms be secured in a locked container or equipped with a tamper-resistant safety device” will be heard next week by the state’s highest court.

The Department of Homeland Security is gagging local law enforcement agencies around the country to protect the privacy of illegal aliens. This sort of heavy-handed micromanagement should come as no surprise to those familiar with the decades-long, multi-administrational, bi-partisan project of absolutely eliminating the principle of federalism in general and the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution in particular.

In a recent test case in New Jersey regarding the right of citizens to keep and bear arms, an appeals court judge maintained that a fundamental right guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution apparently does not apply in the Garden State. Specifically, the court concluded that Americans have no right to buy a handgun. Now the mayor of Seattle thinks that this same fundamental right to keep and bear arms does not apply the in Emerald City.