“The see it as interstate commerce and want to regulate it.”
I think the Federal government does and should have the right to ban or regulate importation. Arguably between states as well. But this is strictly intrastate commerce.
If we want to say that states should have the exclusive right over intrastate trade of guns or whether individuals have to purchase health insurance, then we need to accept that some states will use that 10th Amendment power to do things that we might not like so much.
“If we want to say that states should have the exclusive right over intrastate trade of guns or whether individuals have to purchase health insurance, then we need to accept that some states will use that 10th Amendment power to do things that we might not like so much.”
Yep, that’s the sticky little problem with freedom, isn’t it? People (even people on FR who should know better) want to have it both ways when it comes to so many different issues.
I'm not even convinced that's a bad thing. Some states can be tailored more socialistic and the proles can go live there, and some can be more freedom oriented and the good guys can live there. Both people can live under laws of their own choosing and learn and make further decisions about the consequences of those choices.
Plus, I think it's really a bad idea for states to try to harmonize criminal law and tax rates and so on. (Well, good idea for them, bad idea for their masters, us.) If states have to worry about driving the productive members of society away, the ones who make the whole framework tenable, there is a limit on how authoritarian and how greedy they can get. If all the states harmonize their totalitarianism, that limit doesn't work nearly as well.