Vin Suprynowicz

SPECIAL TO THE SHOTGUN NEWS

Imagine you’re driving to visit relatives in another state, this summer. A cop pulls you over and asks to see your driver’s license. Then, even though your license is current, he cuffs you and hauls you off to the calaboose. Your crime? You were driving on a license from your home state; you neglected to get a new and separate drivers license, in advance, for each state you were planning to pass through.

Ridiculous? Of course it is. Article IV of the Constitution stipulates that “Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state,” and Congress is empowered to make laws describing how “such acts, records and proceedings shall be proved.”

If you’re married (or divorced) in Nevada, your status remains unchanged when you visit Arizona, or Mississippi. No one in another state can properly tell you, “We don’t honor them interracial marriages here in God’s country. You and your so-called ‘missus’ are gonna have to rent separate rooms if you plan to stay in THIS hotel.”

The other 49 states also have to honor your drivers license. (Though it would be interesting to see how they’d react if one state stopped issuing them, simply asking “Why should anyone need a ‘license’ to travel?”)

But in fact, the absurd situation described above is precisely what confronts a law-abiding gun owner who wants to carry his loaded self-defense weapon on an interstate trip. Some states honor the “concealed carry permits” of some other states, but not of others. Get out a map, take a few thousand dollars, send away for the varying requirement to obtain “permits” from seven or eight states — some of which you may have no intention of visiting — in order to have a FAIR chance of having one of your half-dozen “permits” honored wherever you travel (though you can forget New York, California, Washington City or Chicago.)

And what about a resident of Vermont? Last time I checked, peaceful, bucolic Vermont is the only state which fully heeded the Second and 14th amendments, setting no requirement that any resident or visitor seek a state “license or permit” to carry a concealed handgun.

So what does a law-abiding Vermonter — who can’t acquire a “state concealed-weapon permit” since there’s no such thing — tell the New York or Ohio cop who asks to see his permit if he’s stopped while driving west to visit someone in relatively gun-friendly Wyoming? How about, “Do I get to make one phone call from jail?”

On July 22, the U.S. Senate voted on an amendment sponsored by Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., which would have allowed Americans to carry concealed firearms across state lines, provided they “have a valid permit or if, under their state of residence … are entitled to do so.”

Under Senate rules, 60 votes were required for enactment. So — as Republican turncoats Richard Lugar of Indiana and George Voinovich of Ohio joined Socialist Bernie Sanders and 36 police-state Democrats — the measure failed despite winning a 58-39 majority.

There was some game-playing going on, of course. Most Democrats hoped the measure would be kept off the floor so they wouldn’t have to expose their anti-self-defense position to voters. But Senate Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, whose main hope of winning re-election is to scare off any viable contender, wanted the vote precisely so he could bolster his support among Nevada gun owners.

(Several organized Nevada gun groups have praised the senator for supporting a county “shooting park” near Las Vegas — even though it’s an open secret the county will finish banning target-shooting anywhere in the Southern Nevada desert other than inside their closely monitored “shooting park,” as soon as the facility opens.)

Some ask whether this shouldn’t have been left a matter of states’ rights. But the Bill of Rights states “The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” And that proviso was further incorporated against state infringements in 1868 by the Fourteenth Amendment, specifically intended to overrule so-called “black codes” disarming freed slaves in the South, which amendment states “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

If states have a legitimate power to infringe the rights of a law-abiding U.S. citizen to bear arms the moment they arrive from another state where everything they’re doing is in perfect compliance with local law, then those same states must have an equal “right” to bar the free practice of religion by someone hailing from across the state line — by, say, not allowing someone who attended divinity school out-of-state, where “standards are different,” from preaching a sermon without re-licensing.

“I find it ironic that many of the senators who rightfully believe one state’s same-sex marriage licenses should be recognized in all states are now not willing to extend that same courtesy to concealed carry licenses,” commented Donny Ferguson, spokesman for the Libertarian Party’s National Committee, after Sen. Thune’s common-sense measure failed. “Your rights of free speech, free worship and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure do not end at the state line. Neither does your right to keep and bear arms without government infringement,” said Ferguson.

Voting against the amendment were the Usual Gang of Suspects, including Democrats Barbara Boxer, D-CA, Roland Burris, D-IL, Christopher Dodd, D-CT, Richard Durbin, D-IL, Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, Comedian Al Franken, D-MN, Kristen Gillibrand, D-NY, John Kerry, D-MA, Herb Kohl, D-WI, Frank Lautenberg, D-NJ, Patrick Leahy, D-VT, Carl Levin, D-MI, Patty Murray, D-WA, Bill Nelson, D-FL, Charles Schumer, D-NY, Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, who this month identifies himself as a Democrat.

Holders of valid state firearms permits are an almost uniquely law-abiding bunch. That these senators in this day and age would oppose such a basic Civil Rights law — choosing instead to defend the current crazy quilt of state codes, which have the predictable and often intended effect of disarming black citizens disproportionately — is incredible.

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In a July 7 letter, former NRA president Sandra S. Froman, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr (who has since campaigned as a Libertarian), Grover G. Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, a dozen other member of the NRA board of directors, and the heads of the NRA affiliates in Pennsylvania, New York, Arizona, New Jersey and Massachusetts, urged senators “not to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the next associate justice of the United States Supreme Court,” citing their “grave concern” over her Second Amendment record.

The letter warns, in part: “While on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor revealed her views on the right to keep and bear arms in Maloney v. Cuomo, a case decided after Heller, yet holding that the Second Amendment is not a fundamental right, that it does not apply to the states, and that if an object is ‘designed primarily as a weapon’ that is a sufficient basis for total prohibition even within the home.

“Earlier in a 2004 case, United States v. Sanchez-Villar, Sotomayor and two colleagues perfunctorily dismissed a Second Amendment claim holding that ‘the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right,’” the gun-rights leaders point out. “Imagine if such a view were expressed about other fundamental rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, such as the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

“Surprisingly, Heller” — the Washington, D.C. Supreme Court case that threw out that city’s outright ban on loaded self-defense weapons kept at home — “was a 5-4 decision, with some justices arguing that the Second Amendment does not apply to private citizens or that if it does, even a total gun ban could be upheld if a ‘legitimate governmental interest’ could be found. … If this had been the majority view, then any gun ban could be upheld, and the Second Amendment would be meaningless.

“The Second Amendment survives today by a single vote in the Supreme Court,” the letter-writers conclude. “Judge Sotomayor has already revealed her views on these issues and we believe they are contrary to the intent and purposes of the Second Amendment and Bill of Rights. …”

Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, warns the letter could have consequences for Democrats:

“Red and purple state Democratic senators know that if they vote to confirm Sotomayor, they will face a lot of unhappy constituents back home,” Mr. Levey wrote in July. “Those senators will have to explain to their constituents why they endangered their fundamental rights by putting someone so hostile to the Second Amendment on the Supreme Court. And that’s after they finish explaining away Sotomayor’s embrace of racial preferences and disdain for property rights.”