In the midst of a raging political battle on gun control in Washington, D.C., legislators in Jefferson City are approving legislation to counteract any potential federal restrictions on firearms.

The Missouri House of Representatives passed a bill Thursday aimed at protecting Missouri’s Second Amendment rights. House Bill 436, sponsored by Rep. Doug Funderburk, R-St. Peters, would make all past, present or future federal laws and regulations that infringe on the right to keep and bear arms null and void in the state. It also makes it a Class A misdemeanor for any federal official to enforce laws that conflict with the right to bear arms.

HB436 additionally would allow K-12 teachers and administrators to be authorized as a “school protection officer” and carry concealed weapons within any school in their district.

Funderburk said his intention with HB436 is to protect Missourians’ constitutional rights.

“Our constitutions are the supreme laws of this land that cannot be usurped by legislative fiat at any level,” he said. “I think this bill removes the noose the federal government has been gradually putting around the necks of its citizens and pulling it tighter and tighter and tighter.”

However opponents of the bill argue that HB436 doesn’t focus on guns — it focuses on nullification of federal laws, technically illegal according to the supremacy clause in Article Six of the Constitution.

“This isn’t about guns, it is about nullification,” Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia, said. “This has nothing to do with guns whatsoever; it is about Missouri saying that we will not follow the United States constitution.”

“(HB436) is about cession and only about cession,” Kelly said.

Funderburk said raising questions of cession were not his intention, but rather he wanted to emphasize the power of states to enforce its role in the lawmaking process.

“This bill has nothing to do with cession and everything about recapturing and reorganizing what really is the proper role and authority of the state government,” he said. “So that is not cession, that is actually shoring up what our founding fathers intended … that makes this state stronger and that makes this nation stronger.”

The House approved HB436 with a 115-41 vote. The bill, which is now under consideration in the Senate, comes one day after the U.S. Senate failed to approve a bipartisan plan to institute a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and to expand background checks for gun buyers.

In January, a similar bill originating in the Senate provoked similar questions on nullification and states rights in regards to gun control legislation. Senate Bill 150, introduced by Sen. Brian Munzlinger, R-Williamstown, would make it a Class D felony for any federal official to enforce stricter gun laws than had been in place since last year.

“(The executive orders) are taking away some of our Constitutional rights that our forefathers granted us in the Constitution and in the amendments to the Constitution,” Munzlinger said. “They’re trying to put this as a gun issue, but in my mind and in a lot of other people’s minds it’s not just guns. It’s the taking of freedoms that we have in the United States.”

SB150 was last approved by the Senate General Laws Committee on March 5 and is not currently on a Senate calendar.