it is the job of the individual states to sort out these things themselves.
Ideally, yes. In practice, as you pointed out, we have the fourteenth amendment, and it's fortunate we do because quite a number of States have caught the statism disease. I think just about everyone has a love-hate relationship with the 14th amendment, but states are violating so many basic rights these days that I have difficulty believing the founders would abide them.
True, but I think solving state problems on the local level is far safer and more constitutional than having an all powrful central government playing superhero today and tyrant tomorrow.
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If Kalifornia chooses not to allow this Texan to carry there, that is wrong, but that is something Kalifornians need to work out themselves.
Which isn't fair to someone who doesn't live in California but wants to visit. States are not supposed to be sovereign territories that can pass whatever laws they want. We're not supposed to feel like foreigners when we cross a a state line. There is supposed to be freedom of travel and commerce between states, and state laws restricting weapon carry and ownership impede both travel and commerce.
No it isn't right. Yes states are supposed to be sovereign territories. I feel like a foreigner when in the northeast. Take a look at the past two elections. America is de facto multiple countries in one. If I had to break them down, I would say there is the northeast/midwest (Kansas and the Dakotas to Maine), The south (Texas to Virginia), the west (Arizona and New Mexico up to Montana and Idaho), The left coast (California, Oregon and Washington), Alaska and finally Hawaii. We are in fact different counties with different values, different spiritual beleifs, different laws, different accents, different lifestyles, etc. and have been since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock in the 1600s. The states in each of these areas are going to be different in their laws for better or worse. Red and blue states. I am from Texas, my mother is from Louisiana, my father is from Mississippi. We are southerners. We are proud of that distinction as other people should be proud of their distinct cultures and communities whether they are within the United States or without.
That being said, you are right that under the constitution, we are under the agreement that each state shall grant free commerce and travel to the others. If this is not followed then the answer is not to pass another law on top of the law we already have (the constitution) and especially not invade a state with U.S. Marshalls and FBI or worse the military and make them do what the federal government wants. The federal goverment was a creation of the states not the other way around. It was a voluntary union of states that came together in agreement for the benefit of commerce, defense and trade not to be one big "nation" or "empire." If one state violates this agreement (the constitution) than it, in my mind, forfiets all protections and benifits of the constitution and is in effect ejected from the union. Think of it this way, if you joined a club and someone in the club started violating the rules that were laid down in the beginning, the solution is not to engage in violence against that person to make him follow them, but to remove him from the club rolls.
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I don't want the Feds jumping in. If they do, what is to stop them from jumping in and enforcing pro abortion legislation if my state chooses to outlaw abortion for instance?
If they don't jump in, what's to stop them from passing pro-abortion legislation? Nothing. The SCOTUS has no spine. You think Alito or Thomas is going to jump up and say, "well gosh, Congress didn't pass national ccw reciprocity, so that means they're taking the interstate commerce clause seriously again?" Look at Thomas's dissent in the Oregon assisted suicide case. He's resigned to the fact that the SCOTUS has given Congress carte blanche with respect to the ICC. I don't think he'll even bother to continue his dissents in interstate commerce clause abuses. I think he might resort to writing sarcastic concurring opinions based on Raich, satisfying himself with jabs at the majority in his footnotes.
Which is more to be feared, a state passing laws to violate your rights in that state or a national goverment that passes laws to violate everyone's rights in every state?
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I don't want a Hobbsian centralized government deciding what we should or should not do.
It doesn't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. It gives you, as a visitor to a state, the option, should you choose to accept it, of carrying in the manner that the state's residents can carry, and prevents you from becoming a criminal if the state you're visiting doesn't allow concealed carry.
I think this legislation is one of the least offensive commerce clause abuses imaginable. Unlike 99% of commerce clause legislation, this bill doesn't create any federal licensing scheme, and doesn't require any federal effort to implement or administrate. It partially prevents states from interfering with an enumerated federal right. Is that really so wrong?
The only reason the ICC is used as justification is that Congressman Stearns knows perfectly well that, with any other stated justification, the bill would be shot down by the federal courts. Do you object to the bill no matter what the justification, or do you think it would be constitutional if it cited the 2nd and 14th amendments in conjunction with the full faith and credit clause?
I think the federal government derailed a long time ago, but no one is volunteering to depose the federal government and construct a new one. This piece of legislation, practically speaking, seems like one of the best we're ever going to get. And for every minute Congress spends dealing with this bill, that's one minute they're not going to have to think up new pork-barrel projects or work on bills that truly are abusive to individual rights.
You'll get no argument from me that things are in bad shape.
But the solution to fixing the problem, both national and state (states aren't perfect either) is not by looking to the national goverment to solve the problems but by educating those of our community and state of the true priniples on which our states were founded. I know that sounds like an abstract political slogan but it is true in a more gradual sense. In other words it's not going to come though electing Republican "A" or Democrat "B" but by putting your children in good schools (non public) that teach these values. It's by going to churches that teach where true power and change come from (not blind flag waving Republican "rah rah" churches or bleeding heart Democrat churches calling for social reform via government). In a nutshell, we, as a people, need to learn to think the way the founding fathers and their former and latter generations did. As many of us in this forum know, they would have been baffled at the way we think today (just about firearms alone).
I don't think settling for laws as the one discussed in this thread and saying "This is as good as it gets" is the solution. The more we conservative minded people compromise, the more we inch by inch move to the left and ultimately defeat our own beliefs giving the enemy inevitable victory.
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Commonwealth of VA have chosen to ignore that document, I think something should be done to restore those rights.
