Alia Beard Rau

The Republic | azcentral.com

Arizona could ignore executive actions like the gun-control plan President Barack Obama announced Tuesday if the state Legislature passes a bill introduced by Republican lawmakers.

House Bill 2024 would prohibit Arizona and its local governments from using staff or financial resources to enforce or support any presidential executive order, federal agency policy or U.S. Supreme Court opinion that “is not in pursuance of the Constitution” and has not been passed by Congress and signed into law.

The bill does not detail any process for determining whether such orders, policies and opinions abide by the Constitution or who would have the authority to determine that.

Rep. Mark Finchem, R-Oro Valley, introduced the bill, and several of the Legislature’s most conservative House and Senate Republicans have signed on in support. A similar bill last year passed the House but failed to get a final Senate vote before the session ended.

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Finchem said the bill was not developed in anticipation of Obama's latest action on gun control, but he said the timing is good. He's been working on the bill for nearly a year.

“This wasn’t a response to the president’s latest overreach, but it has everything to do with it,” he said. "House Bill 2024 was simply written to get us back to three branches of government at the federal level that are working together instead of in spite of each other."

He said it’s time for the states to start wielding their sovereign authority.

“If you torture the Constitution enough, you will get it to say anything. And that’s what we have today,” he said. “The reason for House Bill 2024 is to take the Constitution out of the torture chamber and have Arizona stand up and say we are sovereign and we have expectations that you will live by the letter of the law and the Constitution.”

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Finchem, a former public-safety officer, said he hadn’t yet seen the details of Obama’s proposal but questioned the impact of the few details he had heard, particularly increasing regulations at gun shows.

“I think all of us who are responsible gun owners, responsible self-defense folks, want to see a safe world,” he said. “But bad guys don’t give a flying rip where they’re going to get guns from. They’ll steal them. They’ll buy them out of the trunk of a car."

He said people who are bent on doing harm to others will find a weapon, regardless of any new regulations. People need to be able to protect themselves, he said.

“We are seeing a level of violence brought on by armed individuals who are excited about an ideology to act out on,” he said. "We have a God-given right to protect ourselves by any means necessary."

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