Comments on: The Constitution really DOES mean what is says

By: The Liberty Papers »Blog Archive » Two Steps Forward, One Step Back On Gun Rights

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:28:40 +0000

[...] Doug Mataconis: I believe it should have been clear without the fourteenth amendment, and merely through the… [...]

By: Doug Mataconis

Doug Mataconis — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 14:27:52 +0000

I believe it should have been clear without the fourteenth amendment, and merely through the supremacy clause that ALL elements of the constitution as directly related to the people and the protection of our rights (as opposed to the structural components of the constitution) applied to the states.

Except that such an interpretation would have been directly contradictory to the clearly stated intent of the Bill of Rights, which was seen at the time solely as a limit on federal power.

It also would have required judges to make some rather creative leaps of logic —- the First Amendment, for example, says “Congress shall make no law” not “The State Legislature of Illinois shall make no law”

By: Below The Beltway » Blog Archive » Two Steps Forward, One Step Back On Gun Rights

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:58:16 +0000

[...] Based on this, the Court upheld the law at issue in the case; a county ordinance that prohibited gun owners from bringing guns on county property or, more specifically as Chris Burke notes, the county passed an ordinance prohibiting the Plaintiff’s in this case from holding a gun sh… [...]

By: Larry Sheldon

Larry Sheldon — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:02:18 +0000

This is not the Ninth Circuit I thought I knew.

Maybe there is hope after all.

By: Samaritan

Samaritan — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 01:24:57 +0000

We the people have an interesting way of deciding, in extremis, what our rights actually are. On an April morning in 1775 the government attempted to end our right to keep and bear arms with very little success… If the government sticks its nose into an area where it has no business then it should not complain when it gets slapped down.

If the government decides that it wants to act as a protector of the peoples rights, which is its only lawful/constitutional reason for existence, then it will find us eager to support its policies. The constitutional rules here are simple, all the federal government needs to do is follow them.