The 14th amendment has done more harm than good to republican government. You can't have "states' rights" and incorporation. It's one or the other.
“The 14th amendment has done more harm than good to republican government. You can’t have “states’ rights” and incorporation. It’s one or the other”.
I am no legal scholar but I disagree. While I am no fan of the 14th amendment, there are rights that are guaranteed us through the constitution that states can not abridge. These rights are/should be incorporated. The 2nd amendment is now thankfully one of them.
Personally Huck, I think we should take everything we can.
This is absolutely huge, considering it’s the Ninth Circus. It could lead to a huge fall of oppressive firearms laws around the nation, especially IL, NY, NJ and CA.
Also personally, I’d love to walk into the Jacob Javits Center, and come out with a rifle and shotgun; doing so because NY’s and NYC’s socialist firearms laws having pretty much been done away with.
Only since the USSC began reading words that don't appear in the text of the Amendment. Words like "Abortion." Look at the original intent of that Amendment: It was the second in a natural progression involving the eradication of slavery. The 13th Amendment banned slavery. The 14th Amendment made former slaves US citizens as a necessary precursor to the 15th Amendment which was to give the former slaves the right to vote.
Later on liberal courts began tacking on "interpretations" so as to give their judicial activism teeth and in some cases that was a good thing. The reality is that the Bill of Rights was originally designed to only apply to the Federal government. That's why the Feds could ban discrimination but the states were free to institute same at the state and local levels for another 100 years, preventing blacks from voting and allowing them to be lawfully (albeit immorally) denied local access to firearms to fend off the incursions of the KKK. When incorporation came along in the 1960s that was the final link to force even local government to adhere to the Bill of Rights. The immoral thing done at that time was to deny the 2nd Amendment inclusion for the satisfaction of the power elites.
You can't have "states' rights" and incorporation. It's one or the other.
When you put it like this, what you're saying is to deny the concept of Federalism. Look at it this way: Used in the way you just did it calls for a clear return to the Articles of Confederation, the first framework for our government which was clearly insufficient as the time spent under it demonstrates. The Whiskey Rebellion and Shays rebellion are symptoms. The Articles prevented raising taxes to cover the cost of any sort of government. The Articles forbade raising of a standing army for self defense from global aggression. The Articles were weak.
Federalism repudiates all that and stands for the separation of powers with the Federal law as the controlling authority. But this presupposes that the current federal government really has the security, strength and prosperity of the nation as the foremost concern. Where that is absent tyranny soon appears and the importance of the 2nd Amendment becomes even more clear.