Full Faith and Credit and Handgun Laws

A question was raised in class about why the full faith and credit clause applies to marriage licenses and other public records and laws, but not - currently anyway - to gun laws, especially concealed and open carry rules. I really don't know as of yet, but here are a few readings that might help us figure this out.

- Jurist: Survey of State Open and Concealed Carry Laws.
- Gun Debate: Concealed Carry Reciprocity and the Constitution.
- Volokh Conspiracy: Full Faith and Credit, Pardons, and Gun Rights.
- The Fiscal Times: A New Gun Law Pits Virginia Against the Constitution.

The Full Faith and Credit clause in the news . . .

The case is V.L. v. E.L.

Here is the question presented to the court:

Does the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution require that the Alabama state courts recognize a Georgia state court’s adoption order?

Here's the court's decision:

The Alabama Supreme Court erred in refusing to grant full faith and credit to a judgment by a Georgia court making a woman the legal parent of the children she had raised with her same-sex partner since birth; the judgment appears on its face to have been issued by a court with jurisdiction and there is no established Georgia law to the contrary.

For detail:

Scotusblog: V.L. v. E.L.
Oyez: V.L. v. E.L.

From the Atlantic: If Congress Won't Raise the Debt Ceiling, Obama Will Be Forced to Break the Law

A look ahead at the looming fight over raising the debt ceiling.

Regardless of how the current shutdown crisis ends, it seems there will be a second debt-ceiling crisis two weeks from now. And the questions are flying again: Is the debt-ceiling statute unconstitutional? Can Obama “invoke” Section Four of the Fourteenth Amendment and assert authority to breach the debt ceiling to pay “the public debt of the United States, authorized by law”? Or can one party, decisively defeated in a nationwide election and controlling only the lower house of the legislature, threaten the full faith and credit of the United states — and the health of the world economy — in pursuit of its short-term partisan advantage?