markk
Member
Do you really think that states will eliminate their existing CC laws just to avoid compliance with or protest this law?
Controlling a 2 ton vehicle moving at 30+ mph is alot different than carrying a holstered firearm.Besides would you want some one driving in your state with an out of state DL, where all they did was pass a back ground check and pay a fee?
The same as it should be for firearms under the second amendment. NO state has the right to stop you from Keeping (owning) arms or Bearing (wearing) them.
Just a FYI, infrigment of a right means not allowing you to express that right. Making you jump thru a hoop to do so is not an infrigment.( there is case law on this a mile high)
Amendment 14 - Citizenship Rights. Ratified 7/9/1868.
1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
There were few, if any, gun control laws on the books until after the Civil War. (The few state attempts at firearm regulation had been almost without exception overturned by state courts that considered them in violation of the Second Amendment, which they considered to apply to the states as well as to the federal government!)
Then, suddenly, the Bill of Rights seemed to apply only to the federal government, and every Southern state had a law prohibiting newly-freed slaves from owning guns. (Guess why? It was getting damned dangerous for the Klansmen to lynch blacks.) The Fourteenth Amendment rendered those "Black Codes" unconstitutional, so the Southerners figured out some backdoor methods. One was banning cheap guns (the term Saturday Night Special has its origin in the racial slur "***** Saturday Night," which was similar to "Father's Day in Harlem" or "Chinese Fire Drill.") Another was a permit system/waiting period/ background check, requiring approval of the sheriff, who usually just happened to be a Klansman.
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876). In Louisiana, a hundred or so good old boys got word that there were some "uppity *****" having an organizational meeting, to try to protect themselves against constant attacks by white gangs. The good old boys got together and crashed the party. They took away the Negroes' guns, and then proceeded to murder them. They were charged with conspiring to deprive their victims of their constitutional rights to assemble, and to bear arms. The court ruled that (1) the First and Second Amendments did not apply to the states, (2) the Fourteenth Amendment only prohibited the State from depriving the people of their rights, and the good old boys were not agents of the State, and (3) the controlling Enforcement Acts protected only those rights "granted by the Constitution." The court said that the rights to assemble and to bear arms were fundamental rights. They were not "granted" by the Constitution, but were inalienable;
they were rights with which the victims were "endowed by their Creator." Therefore, the rights were not protected by the Enforcement Acts, and the KKK boys literally got away with murder! (This is a case proudly cited by many people who call themselves "liberals," instead of the racists they really are.)
Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886). Presser had organized a society of German immigrants ("Lehr und Wehr Verein") who believed that regular military drill was an important part of good citizenship. Four hundred of them paraded through downtown Chicago, carrying rifles. Presser was charged with parading without a license, and organizing and maintaining a private army. He claimed that the Illinois statutes violated his rights under the First Amendment (freedom of assembly) and the Second Amendment (right to bear arms).
The court ruled that the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government, not to the States, and that any State could prohibit free speech, free exercise of religion, assembly, bearing of arms, etc. (I wonder how the A.C.L.U., the American Nazis, and the citizens of the Chicago suburb of Skokie would react to this sort of ruling today. Come to think of it, that would also mean that each state sould have its own established religion!) Also, in Presser the Court never mentioned the individual right to bear arms; the case dealt only with an maintaining an armed organization.
Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535 (1894). Texas had a law forbidding the carrying of weapons, and authorizing arrest without warrant for any violation. Miller claimed this violated the Second Amendment and the Fourth Amendment. The Court again ruled that "the restrictions of this amendments operate only upon the Federal power." But they admitted that it was possible that the Fourteenth Amendment might cause the Bill of Rights to apply to the States as well. However, Miller did not raise his objection early enough. "If the Fourteenth Amendment limited the power of the States as to such rights . . . we think it was fatal to this claim that it was not set up in the trial court." Id. at 538.
Subsequent to Cruikshank, Presser, and Miller v. Texas, the Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment does in fact cause the Bill of Rights to apply to the States. In effect, those three cases have been invalidated. To believe otherwise is to believe that the States can restrict religion, speech, and assembly, to execute unreasonable searches and seizures, to deny jury trials, or to infringe the right to bear arms.
An important note: the Court never doubted for an instant that the right to bear arms was not an individual right which the Federal government could not infringe. These cases never talked about the Second Amendment being a right of states to organize militias. It has always been assumed that the right to bear arms is a right of individual citizens to bear arms. Perhaps the Supreme Court's most infamous decision was Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857). Chief Justice Taney said that Negroes could not be "citizens," because if they were, they would have the right to vote, to assemble, to speak on political subjects, to travel freely, and "to keep and carry arms wherever they went." Id. at 417. Taney, the classic racist, found that prospect inconceivable. It is noteworthy, though, that the Supreme Court considered the right to carry guns wherever they go an individual right of every citizen, along with voting, speaking, assembling. "Nor can Congress deny the people the right to keep and bear arms, nor the right to trial by jury, nor compel anyone to be a witness against himself..." Id. at 450. Obviously, "the people" refers to all citizens, not the states or militia, or the rest of the sentence becomes meaningless. See Verdugo-Urquidez, supra.
What the Second Amendment protects is an individual right to bear military weapons, not for hunting, not for target shooting, not for repelling foreign invaders, but for the purpose of preventing oppression of the people by their own government. The historical, textual, structural, doctrinal, prudential, judicial, and legislative evidence is devastating. Any intelligent person who wishes to study the matter seriously should probably begin with S. Levinson, The Embarrassing Second Amendment, 99 Yale L.J. 637. Professor Levinson (University of Texas) is a devout liberal who set out to prove once and for all that the Second Amendment does not protect an individual right (etc., ad nauseam). To his great embarrassment (hence the title), he found overwhelming evidence to the contrary. He had the academic integrity to admit it, for which he deserves great admiration. He does not like gun ownership, any more than some people like flag-burning or organized religion, but he recognizes that the individual right exists, and is integral to our constitutional protections, whether one likes it or not.
Scott v. Sandford[141] opines that privileges and immunities of free men include the right "to keep and carry arms wherever they went,"[142] (p.79)and the rights Congress cannot deny include "the right to keep and bear arms."[143] The fourteenth amendment was intended to extend the rights enunciated in Scott to all persons and to prevent such rights from being infringed by the states.[144] This historical reason, plus the decision of 43 states to adopt an arms guarantee, supports the view that the second amendment should be binding on the states. It has been firmly established in our concept of "liberty" under the due process clause.[145]
Although the second amendment has not yet been held to be binding on the states, state guarantees to arms offer the most promise in protecting individual liberty because numerous state courts have taken the right seriously and have strived to achieve a workable balance between a right and the needs of the state. State courts have on at least 20 reported occasions found arms laws to be unconstitutional.[146] This once again demonstrates that the federal Bill of Rights serves as a floor and not as a ceiling.[147]
Prior to the adoption of this Amendment, the Bill of Rights had been held by the Supreme Court to not apply to the States.[9] While many states modeled their constitutions and laws after the United States Constitution and federal laws, those state constitutions did not necessarily include provisions comparable to the Bill of Rights. According to some commentators, the framers and early supporters of the Fourteenth Amendment believed that it would ensure that the states would be required to recognize the individual rights the federal government was already required to respect in the Bill of Rights and in other constitutional provisions
Your assuming you have a right to own a firearm...
which I read as own and wear. Yes I do have that right."Keep and Bear"
There you go again...TAB said:Your assuming you have a right to own a firearm...
The fourteenth amendment was intended to extend the rights enunciated in Scott to all persons
which I read as own and wear.
Do you really think that states will eliminate their existing CC laws just to avoid compliance with or protest this law?
I hope they do. This is a state issue, not a federal one.
I do so love the hypocrisy. Folks on gun forums always cry and whine about the gubbermint being involved in x or y, but when it comes to something they want, the cry and whine goes the opposite direction.
LESS government is the answer...
That doesn't sound right to me. First off, a free State must have the ability to limit freedoms ... we may as well say that taking away the States' ability to legislate would result in smaller government. Further, it seems to imply that if the feds assume undelegated powers and force reform on the States then the result is less or smaller government ... I think that approach is failing. I don't see how taking the ability to limit freedoms from the States AND GIVING IT TO THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT results in less government. Isn't the US founded upon the notion that the way to have small government is to leave the ability to limit freedoms to each State?Taking the ability to Limit freedoms from the states IS less government.
Taking the ability to Limit freedoms from the states IS less government.