http://news.yahoo.com/gun-law-pits-virginia-against-111500329.html?nf=1
A New Gun Law Pits Virginia Against the Constitution
The Fiscal Times By Edward Morrissey
December 31st, 2015
A new battle in the debate over gun rights and restrictions bears one striking similarity to another major cultural battle recently fought over another cultural divide. It once again pits the concepts of federalism against those who would assert the consistent recognition of individual rights across the nation. And oddly, this battle puts many of the same combatants on the opposite side of the question. This fight began in Virginia last week. Attorney General Mark Herring announced that he would unilaterally repeal agreements with 25 other states for reciprocal recognition of carry permits by February 1st, claiming that he found their standards for issuing carry permits too low. Herring argued that Virginia residents could apply for and receive carry permits in other states when they couldn’t qualify within their own state and therefore evade the restrictions imposed by Virginia law.
Herring has now placed responsible Virginia gun owners into these kinds of inadvertent traps by canceling reciprocity agreements with states in the region. That prompts a larger question: why are they needed in the first place? Article IV, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states, “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” The inclusion of that clause clearly intended to prevent these kind of legal traps for law-abiding citizens by forcing other states to recognize the licenses and permits of other states, and its placement in the original articles shows that this takes precedence over the 10th Amendment recognition of state sovereignty.
Ironically, this was also one of the arguments used to oppose the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), signed into law by Bill Clinton. Congress in that case passed the law with the express purpose of voiding the Full Faith and Credit clause when it pertained to the definition of marriage, especially when it came to court judgments and state benefits. The Supreme Court used other constitutional arguments to strike down DOMA in its Windsor decision, and mooted the argument entirely when it demanded full national recognition of same-sex marriage in Obergefell. In earlier decisions such as Pacific Employers Insurance (1939) and Hyatt (2003 on tax rates), the court also ruled that states may have “some limitations” in recognizing other state’s laws – when those statutes utterly conflict with their own. That, however, is not the case with carry permits. Virginia will continue to issue carry permits, just as these other states do. Herring claims that the processes used by other states do not meet the standards of Virginia, but that turns the Pacific Employers Insurance decision on its head. Each state that issues carry permits has settled on their own criteria for issuance, and those requirements remain in effect for the duration of the permit regardless of temporary travel.