I have often questioned why I need anybody’s permission to carry a concealed weapon. I don’t need a license to speak my mind. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution makes that quite clear. It even allows Larry Flynt to publish smut and the New York Times to print smears. But for reasons that I cannot fathom, I have to ask for permission to carry a pistol in my pocket. I even have to pay for it. The Second Amendment plainly states that my right to “keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
Any law that requires issuance of a license to exercise that right would seem to constitute just such an infringement. What is an even greater infringement is that, once I obtain my state’s permission to exercise my constitutional right, that right does not follow me when I cross the state line. A Washington concealed carry permit is not recognized by Oregon. California does not recognize concealed carry permits issued by any other state. For a concealed carry permit to be recognized across state lines, a reciprocity agreement between those states is required.
And so, if I left home with a pistol in my jacket pocket and headed south toward the land of my ancestors, I would be in violation of the law until I reached Arizona. That hardly seems to make sense.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration told Justice Department lawyers to stop defending in court the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, a law that had been enacted during the Clinton years. The Defense of Marriage Act was a reaction to the growing likelihood that one of the union’s screwier states, Massachusetts for example, would overturn thousands of years of law and tradition and recognize gay marriage.
It was reasoned, correctly I believe, that if one state recognized homosexual marriage, then all other states would be obligated to recognize those marriages under the United States Constitution’s full faith and credit clause. Among other things, the full faith and credit law requires that all states recognize driver’s licenses issued by all other states. The prospect that gays would flock to Massachusetts to get married, and then return to their home states was deemed a peril to the republic by the 42nd president and so he pushed through a law that would allow individual states to ignore marriages performed in other states.
The Defense of Marriage Act was intended to selectively neutralize a provision of the Constitution, which seems, I dunno, unconstitutional?
The Defense of Marriage Act is almost certainly unconstitutional. The Constitution cannot be amended by simple legislation. But that’s for the courts to decide, not Barack Obama. Imagine, if you will, President Sarah Palin in 2013 simply choosing not to defend Obamacare in court.
My purpose for bringing this up is that there is a law now before Congress today that would require reciprocity for concealed carry permits. This seems fair. In fact it seems superfluous. The right to keep and bear arms is certainly more clearly protected by the Constitution than gay marriage. Why we should need a separate law to enforce the Constitution escapes me.
Opponents are arguing that liberalizing gun ownership laws will result in an increase in crime, even though data consistently contradicts this thesis.
The two things that liberals blame for crime are guns and poverty. The Obama administration has caused record levels of poverty. And the fear that Barack Obama would attempt to ban private gun ownership has made firearms manufacture one of the few bright spots in the economy. At the same time, crime rates, in particular violent crime rates, have plummeted.
Liberals might want to fine tune their sociological theories so that they conform to observation.
I look forward to liberals arguing that this legislation tramples on states’ rights. For the past 50 years, liberals have argued that every objection to the concentration of authority in the federal government was an attempt to revive the segregated south. Recently, the entire Democratic Congressional leadership got together and accused the state attorneys general who were suing to overturn the Obamacare individual mandate of undermining civil rights because they invoked the Tenth Amendment – states’ rights.
And now the only argument that the Democrats can call upon to object to this bill is states’ rights. But how is California’s refusal to honor my concealed carry permit different from Montana choosing to ignore gay marriages performed in California?
Mitchell herself avoided criticizing the President's Middle East policy, but did note that, "Republican presidential front-runner Texas Governor Rick Perry showed up in New York only blocks away, surrounded by pro-Israel supporters, to slam the President for his past pressure on Israel."
