Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt has filed the state's first challenge to a lawsuit asking a federal court to declare a Kansas gun rights law unconstitutional.

Schmidt's office, in a news release Tuesday, said he filed a motion Monday in U.S. District Court in Kansas seeking dismissal of the suit filed by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The 2013 Kansas statute, known as the "Second Amendment Protection Act," says firearms made and kept in Kansas are exempt from federal gun laws. The Brady Center suit cites the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution — which says federal law rules supreme over state law — among the reasons to declare the law unconstitutional.

It provides for the filing of felony charges against any federal employee attempting to enforce federal regulations on Kansas firearms and ammunition.

In his filing to dismiss the Brady suit, Schmidt argued that the plaintiffs hadn’t been harmed, that the complaint was "political and rhetorical" in nature with no actual legal dispute and that the Kansas law is a valid exercise of the state’s authority.

"The Second Amendment Protection Act does not seek to nullify existing federal gun control laws, nor does it criminalize any conduct that is not properly punishable as a crime," Schmidt said in a statement. "The law seeks instead to enforce the Second Amendment and the Tenth Amendment, by codifying existing Commerce Clause precedents and punishing violations of the established rights of the people of the state of Kansas."

In a statement accompanying the July 9, 2014, challenge to the Kansas law, the director of the Brady Center's legal action project, Jonathan Lowy, said courts have held for years that states simply can't overturn federal laws they don't like.

"Just as Southern states were not allowed to opt-out of federal civil rights laws, the Constitution does not allow Kansas or any other state to nullify federal gun laws that protect Kansans and all Americans from gun violence," Lowy said.

Lowy said the Kansas law could allow some federally prohibited people to buy and possess guns, would prohibit federal background checks for gun purchases, and could allow the unlicensed manufacturing of firearms in Kansas, including guns designed to evade metal detectors and airport security screenings. He said investigations of gun trafficking and illegal gun sales would be crippled..

"Kansas’ gun nullification law is not just bad public policy, it is patently unconstitutional," Lowy added.