Concealed carry is a hot topic in Congress now with a bill coming out of the House called the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011 (H.R. 822). This bill would extend conceal carry rights across state lines, allowing a legal gun owner who lives in Colorado to freely move about the country with his or her legal firearm and enter, say Illinois. The bill does not change the law in regards to obtaining a permit in your home state, it only prevents the other 49 states from infringing on your Second Amendment rights upon entering their state. As with all issues Second Amendment, our Dave Kopel weighed in on the issue. On Monday he was featured in the Cato Daily Podcast to discuss H.R. 822 and its implications on gun rights and interstate travel rights.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the podcast occurs when Dave recalls a question he received from Rep. Mike Quigley while giving testimony on 822 in the House subcommittee. Rep. Quigley points out that conservatives in Congress like to talk about states’ rights, but when it comes down to it, states’ rights are merely a convenience issue for them. For example, doesn’t H.R. 822 challenge states’ rights?

You’ll have to listen to the Cato podcast to get Dave’s answer. It’s truly fascinating and extremely insightful.

UPDATE: Here is a link to Dave Kopel on the Amy Oliver radio show this morning talking about this issue. Thanks to 1310 KFKA for the audio!

In Sunday’s Denver Post perspective page, Independence Institute senior fellow Randal O’Toole explains that using Tax Increment Financing (TIF) subsidies to finance private-sector development is really just a form of corporate welfare, and uses the proposed TIF financed Gaylord Entertainment hotel and conference center deal in Aurora as an example of “…the mania that has led to a nationwide glut in convention centers with urban-renewal tax subsidies that are eating holes in the budgets of school districts, fire departments, and other vital services.”

Writes Randal:

Once some developments are subsidized, developers will refuse to build anything else unless they, too, are subsidized. Urban-renewal subsidies thus become a vicious circle. That’s a major reason TIF is one of the fastest- growing parts of government, increasing an average of 10 percent per year in many states. In California, which invented TIF in 1952, urban-renewal districts are collecting about $160 a year for every resident of the state.

Read the whole thing here. And also check out Randal’s recent Cato Institute Policy Analysis on the issue, “Crony-Capitalism and Social Engineering: The Case against Tax Increment Financing.”

(David Kopel)

Ilya Shapiro is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute and editor-in-chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review. On Monday, I interviewed him for 39 minutes about Cato’s litigation program on constitutional issues, his traveling the country during the last year to debate the health control law, and the constitutional issues involved in the challenge to that law. The MP3 podcast is available here.