joelberg
12-16-2009, 6:25 AM
Does the Second Amendment Apply in Chicago?
Understanding the stakes in the Supreme Court's next gun rights case
Damon W. Root | December 15, 2009
Last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller definitively settled the fact that the Second Amendment secures an individual right—not a collective one—to keep and bear arms. Yet that ruling applied only to the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.). Does the Second Amendment apply against state and local governments as well?
Through a series of legal decisions handed down over the past century, the Supreme Court has gradually held that most of the protections in the Bill of Rights apply to the states via the 14th Amendment, which declares, “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.” The Second Amendment, however, has been glaringly absent from this process, leaving state and local governments free to systematically violate gun rights.
Until now.
Later this term, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago, a case that centers on whether the Windy City’s notorious handgun ban violates the 14th Amendment. As we’ll see, it most certainly does. The text of the 14th Amendment, the historical events leading to its adoption, the goals of its framers, and the statements of purpose made both by its supporters and by those who ratified it, all point in the exact same direction: The amendment was designed to secure individual rights—including the right of armed self-defense—against abusive state and local governments.
In the wake of the Civil War, the former Confederate states began passing a series of laws, ordinances, and regulations that robbed the recently freed slaves and their white allies of their political, economic, and civil rights, including the right to arms. Mississippi’s 1866 Black Code, for example, declared “that no freedman, free Negro, or mulatto…shall keep or carry firearms of any kind.” In other words, America’s original gun control laws were designed to disarm African Americans and leave them at the mercy of predatory state governments.
So the Radical Republicans of the 39th Congress responded with the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, and which was explicitly designed to secure the life, liberty, and property of all Americans from tyrannical state attack. One of the leading figures in this process was Rep. John Bingham of Ohio, the author of the 14th Amendment’s first section (quoted above). In a speech before the House of Representatives, Bingham explained that “the privileges and immunities” protected by the amendment “are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution.” That quite obviously includes the Second Amendment.
...
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/15/does-the-second-amendment-appl
Good article. I love Reason, it's a great publication.
Understanding the stakes in the Supreme Court's next gun rights case
Damon W. Root | December 15, 2009
Last year’s landmark Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller definitively settled the fact that the Second Amendment secures an individual right—not a collective one—to keep and bear arms. Yet that ruling applied only to the federal government (which oversees Washington, D.C.). Does the Second Amendment apply against state and local governments as well?
Through a series of legal decisions handed down over the past century, the Supreme Court has gradually held that most of the protections in the Bill of Rights apply to the states via the 14th Amendment, which declares, “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.” The Second Amendment, however, has been glaringly absent from this process, leaving state and local governments free to systematically violate gun rights.
Until now.
Later this term, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in McDonald v. Chicago, a case that centers on whether the Windy City’s notorious handgun ban violates the 14th Amendment. As we’ll see, it most certainly does. The text of the 14th Amendment, the historical events leading to its adoption, the goals of its framers, and the statements of purpose made both by its supporters and by those who ratified it, all point in the exact same direction: The amendment was designed to secure individual rights—including the right of armed self-defense—against abusive state and local governments.
In the wake of the Civil War, the former Confederate states began passing a series of laws, ordinances, and regulations that robbed the recently freed slaves and their white allies of their political, economic, and civil rights, including the right to arms. Mississippi’s 1866 Black Code, for example, declared “that no freedman, free Negro, or mulatto…shall keep or carry firearms of any kind.” In other words, America’s original gun control laws were designed to disarm African Americans and leave them at the mercy of predatory state governments.
So the Radical Republicans of the 39th Congress responded with the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, and which was explicitly designed to secure the life, liberty, and property of all Americans from tyrannical state attack. One of the leading figures in this process was Rep. John Bingham of Ohio, the author of the 14th Amendment’s first section (quoted above). In a speech before the House of Representatives, Bingham explained that “the privileges and immunities” protected by the amendment “are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution.” That quite obviously includes the Second Amendment.
...
http://reason.com/archives/2009/12/15/does-the-second-amendment-appl
Good article. I love Reason, it's a great publication.