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.
You folks need to do some research on current con-law cases. I suggest that you google (or use your favorite search engine) for “incorporation doctrine.”
Basically, it isn’t a slam-dunk. The SCOTUS has been cherry-picking which parts of the BOR they will incorporate into state jurisdictional rights for decades.
On the RKBA, Justice Thomas agrees with your point of view, but had to write a concurring opinion to express this in McDonald v. Chicago. The other justices who held that the Second Amendment was incorporated via the 14th held that the Second Amendment, the exercise of which might cost people their lives, was not the sort of liberty that the ratifiers of the 14th envisioned in the P&I clause.
The Warren Court was the peak of incorporation doctrine selectivity.
There will need to be several more McDonald-like cases before states and localities quit trying to claim that the Second Amendment is only a federally recognized right.
Which judge will you get to agree with you? Have you seen this case out of IL?
http://www.chicagolawbulletin.com/Articles/2012/01/09/term-jw-01-09-2012.aspx
No matter what the ruling (IL SC is liberal), this won’t get to the SCOTUS. Why?