Ah, but are you not forgetting about Article VI Clause 2 of the Constitution, the Supremacy Clause. If the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017 (H.R. 38) becomes law then Peruta v California becomes a moot ruling.
No, I have not forgotten the Supremacy Clause. Article VI provides that the US “Constitution, and the laws of the United States
which shall be made in pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme law of the land.” (My emphasis.) Wiping out states' CCW laws and conscritpting state officers to enforce a federal scheme are not among the powers vested in Congress in pursuance of the provisions of the Constitution. “The Constitution creates a Federal Government of enumerated powers. See U. S. Const., Art. I, §8. As James Madison wrote, '[t]he powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.' The Federalist No. 45, pp. 292-293 (C. Rossiter ed. 1961).”
US v. Lopez. “Every law enacted by Congress must be based on one or more of its powers enumerated in the Constitution. 'The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken or forgotten, the constitution is written.'
Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, 176 (1803) (Marshall, C. J.).”
US v. Morrison.
The case law clearly establishes that carrying concealed weapons is not a right protected by the Second Amendment of the US Constitution (“. . . the right of the people to keep and bear arms (article 2) is not infringed by laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons . . .”
Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275 (1897)). Regulating the manner that persons may carry deadly weapons is unquestionably among the
states' police powers granted by the Tenth Amendment, “which gives states the rights and powers 'not delegated to the United States.' States are thus granted the power to establish and enforce laws protecting the welfare, safety, and health of the public.”
Printz v. US provides an extensive discussion and example of the limit of Congress's power:
It is incontestible that the Constitution established a system of "dual sovereignty." Gregory v. Ashcroft, 501 U.S. 452, 457 (1991); Tafflin v. Levitt, 493 U.S. 455, 458 (1990). Although the States surrendered many of their powers to the new Federal Government, they retained "a residuary and inviolable sovereignty," The Federalist No. 39, at 245 (J. Madison). This is reflected throughout the Constitution's text, Lane County v. Oregon, 7 Wall. 71, 76 (1869); Texas v. White, 7 Wall. 700, 725 (1869), including (to mention only a few examples) the prohibition on any involuntary reduction or combination of a State's territory, Art. IV, §3; the Judicial Power Clause, Art. III, §2, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause, Art. IV, §2, which speak of the "Citizens" of the States; the amendment provision, Article V, which requires the votes of three fourths of the States to amend the Constitution; and the Guarantee Clause, Art. IV, §4, which "presupposes the continued existence of the states and . . . those means and instrumentalities which are the creation of their sovereign and reserved rights," Helvering v. Gerhardt, 304 U.S. 405, 414-415 (1938). Residual state sovereignty was also implicit, of course, in the Constitution's conferral upon Congress of not all governmental powers, but only discrete, enumerated ones, Art. I, §8, which implication was rendered express by the Tenth Amendment's assertion that "[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
The Framers' experience under the Articles of Confederation had persuaded them that using the States as the instruments of federal governance was both ineffectual and provocative of federal state conflict. See The Federalist No. 15. Preservation of the States as independent political entities being the price of union, and "[t]he practicality of making laws, with coercive sanctions, for the States as political bodies" having been, in Madison's words, "exploded on all hands," 2 Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, p. 9 (M. Farrand ed. 1911), the Framers rejected the concept of a central government that would act upon and through the States, and instead designed a system in which the state and federal governments would exercise concurrent authority over the people--who were, in Hamilton's words, "the only proper objects of government," The Federalist No. 15, at 109. We have set forth the historical record in more detail elsewhere, see New York v. United States, 505 U. S., at 161-166, and need not repeat it here. It suffices to repeat the conclusion: "The Framers explicitly chose a Constitution that confers upon Congress the power to regulate individuals, not States." Id., at 166. [n.10] The great innovation of this design was that-our citizens would have two political capacities, one state and one federal, each protected from incursion by the other"--"a legal system unprecedented in form and design, establishing two orders of government, each with its own direct relationship, its own privity, its own set of mutual rights and obligations to the people who sustain it and are governed by it." U. S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton, 514 U.S. 779, 838 (1995) (Kennedy, J., concurring). The Constitution thus contemplates that a State's government will represent and remain accountable to its own citizens. See New York, supra, at 168-169; United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 576-577 (1995) (Kennedy, J., concurring). Cf. Edgar v. MITE Corp., 457 U.S. 624, 644 (1982) ("the State has no legitimate interest in protecting nonresident[ s ]"). As Madison expressed it: "[T]he local or municipal authorities form distinct and independent portions of the supremacy, no more subject, within their respective spheres, to the general authority than the general authority is subject to them, within its own sphere." The Federalist No. 39, at 245. [n.11]
This separation of the two spheres is one of the Constitution's structural protections of liberty. "Just as the separation and independence of the coordinate branches of the Federal Government serve to prevent the accumulation of excessive power in any one branch, a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal Government will reduce the risk of tyranny and abuse from either front." Gregory, supra, at 458.
[. . .]
. . . where, as here, it is the whole object of the law to direct the functioning of the state executive, and hence to compromise the structural framework of dual sovereignty, such a "balancing" analysis is inappropriate. [n.17] It is the very principle of separate state sovereignty that such a law offends, and no comparative assessment of the various interests can overcome that fundamental defect. Cf. Bowsher, 478 U. S., at 736 (declining to subject principle of separation of powers to a balancing test); Chadha, 462 U. S., at 944-946 (same); Plaut v. Spendthrift Farm, Inc., 514 U.S. 211, 239-240 (1995) (holding legislated invalidation of final judgments to be categorically unconstitutional).
[. . .]
We held in New York that Congress cannot compel the States to enact or enforce a federal regulatory program. Today we hold that Congress cannot circumvent that prohibition by conscripting the State's officers directly. The Federal Government may neither issue directives requiring the States to address particular problems, nor command the States' officers, or those of their political subdivisions, to administer or enforce a federal regulatory program. It matters not whether policymaking is involved, and no case by case weighing of the burdens or benefits is necessary; such commands are fundamentally incompatible with our constitutional system of dual sovereignty
Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997)
HR 38 conscripts states' officers and requires them to enforce, not their own state's constitutional CCW laws, but a "federal regulatory scheme" not unlike the one struck down in
Printz.
Note: I'm neither defending or arguing against the bill, just bringing forward points of contention.
You are unusually competent in doing so.
