[tpaine]

The 14th is not fictitous. It may yet be the amendment that saves our RKBA's from the 'overregulators' among us. Reasonable "due process" must be used in drafting restrictive laws..
-tpaine-



If the 14th saves the RKBA, it won't be through the due process clause, but rather the "priveleges and immunities" clause. Due process doesn't relate to the drafting of the law itself, that is the central prohibition of the law, but rather the provisions for enforcement.

It is supposed to mean non arbitrary, with protections for the accused to challenge the evidence. It really doesn't say anything about the underlying offense.
-El Gato-


Not true.
-- 'Due process' must be used by states in the drafting of laws that could abridge our 'privileges & immunities', or deny our 'equal protections'.
The 14th protects our individual rights against all levels of goverment, and all prohibitive political schemes to 'legislate' controls.

If it's intent is substantually violated, the constitutional contract is void.

[El Gato]

If it's intent is substantually violated, the constitutional contract is void.

The intent was that the states would be prohibitied from violating the rights protected by the first 8 (and maybe 9) amendments. That's been violated starting a decade or so after passage. Mainly because the Justices of the time, didn't like the 14th amendments restrictions on the states. They held that even the first amendments protection of free assembly and free speach did not apply to the state governemts, because those rights were not "created" by the federal Constitution. They found the same to be true of the RKBA. The former is no longer good law, even then only through misapplication of the due process clause and via "incorpoation" doctrine, but the latter is sitll cited by lower courts and of course many hoplophobe groups.