I’m sorry but this is an incorrect understanding of the Constitution and the 14th Amendment. The Bill of Rights does not apply to the States, and the 14th Amendment DID NOT (neither at the time of its ratification as understood and agreed to by the ratifying States nor in practice over the following decades) grant power to the federal government to enforce the Bill of Rights within the States.
What you are referring to is the erroneous “incorporation doctrine,” which was nothing more than unconstitutional judicial activism by federal courts in the 1890s bent on expanding the powers of Washington DC. Just because the federal government has been getting away with something for a century doesn’t mean it is constitutional (take Social Security, Medicare, minimum wages, etc. for example).
Baloney.
The Privileges and Immunities clause was included in order to make sure that the privileges and immunities that belong to all Citizens of the United States are not infringed upon by the States. One of the founding privileges granted to citizens of the united states is the right to keep and bear arms. Congress is charged by the 14th amendment with enforcement of that provision by legislation.
If you agree that a United States Citizen does not have the intrinsic and constitutional right to keep and bear arms, then I guess you can agree with Ron Paul's idiotic stance on this subject. But if you are like me and believe that the right to keep and bear arms is a founding liberty, then you would have to conclude that Ron Paul's position on this issue is as insane as he is.
XIV Amendment Section. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
This seems to be, beanshirts, a slam dunk for P-Marlowe's view. No state can cancel my right to keep and bear arms.
We all know, beanshirts, that there is no way in the world that in the Founding Era that the Founders would have held a gun manufacturer guilty for the crimes of a gun owner/user. Nor would they have held a whiskey company guilty for the crimes of an intoxicated person.
It was a time when personal responsibility was recognized. In fact, I would argue that the right to keep and bear arms is unrestricted from state to state, and that equality under the law from state to state is unviolable for all of our basic rights, and especially the right to life, a subset of which is the right to defend one's life.