“Monorprise said: “Just because you don’t give a power to Washington Does not mean you can’t give that same power to your State or local government their respective Constitutions.”
One may argue the justification for the Civil War, but one cannot argue that the restoration of liberty to slaves and their descendants in the U.S. was an appropriate outcome purchased at the price of about 500,000 lives.”
I guess that depends upon your idea of appropriate which seems rather twisted from where I’m sitting. It also depends upon your acceptance of the promise. The slaves were not freed they just got new a master.
I think its horrible when thousands of people die only to end up enslaving their posterity to a boundless government.
If they could not dream that men would not everywhere have perfect freedom of speech or the right to bare arms then they must never have left Washington D.C. Many of them must never have been to the states they claim to represent.
State and local level restrictions were even at that time not terribly uncommon place.
“I’m sure that our nation’s Founders would never have dreamed that a state would choose to disarm its own citizens.”
They more than dreamed it, but they were not concerned with what states choose to do to themselves, as that was no more their business than it is your business what your neighbor does to himself in his own home.
” The only problem I have with incorporation is that it has been done piece-meal and, at least with respect to the right to keep and bear arms, at a snail’s pace.”
Perhaps the reasons the Federal employees in black robes “incorporated” piece-meal, is many if not most of the so called “bill of rights” were impossible to apply to the States either literally like the 10th ammedment or piratically like most of the others.
Simply put the States did not raditify theses ammedment with the idea of them being limitations IMPOSED by Washington upon themselves. Theses Ammedments were quite literally intended to limit Washington and thus reserve to the people their right to govern themselves in theses areas.
Incorporation turned their entire propose on its head, they quite frankly turned the Federal “Bill of rights” from a shield into a weapon. You may like some of the ways this weapon has been used lately but you do not like how it has been used in the past and will not like at all how it will be used in the future.
Here is a Good article for you to read: http://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2012/03/12/the-14th-amendment-and-the-bill-of-rights/
I am certainly not among those who believe that "due process" has anything to do with the substance of any particular law.
I am of the opinion that among the "immunities" of citizens of the United States is the protection against infringement of the right to keep and bear arms.
From the Fourteenth Amendment:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;"
The claim that this statement simply protected the right of freed slaves to use the navigable waters of the U.S. is simply nonsense.