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The 14th Amendment says that states may not violate the privileges or immunities of citizens, among which is the RKBA. State laws disarming citizens violate this clause, and voiding such laws is in keeping with its original meaning.

The best and clearest explanation of the 'Privileges or Immunities Clause' of the 14th Amendment is Clarence Thomas's brilliant dissent in 'Saenz v Roe' =>

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/98-97.ZD1.html

Building on his writings in Saenz v Roe, Justice Thomas goes into a detailed explanation of the Second Amendment and the privileges, immunities and rights of citizens in McDonald v Chicago. His concurring opinion is worth a read =>

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1521.ZC1.html

Allow me to boast. This was written over 3 months before the McDonald decision =>

In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS will incorporate the Second Amendment via the Due Process Clause. Clarence Thomas will write a brilliant concurring opinion in which he refers back to Saenz, and explains why the the original understanding of the Privileges or Immunities Clause protects the RKBA.

11 posted on 03/02/2010 7:03:25 PM PST by Ken H

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Clarence Thomas concurring in McDonald, June 28, 2010 =>

I agree with that description of the right. But I cannot agree that it is enforceable against the States through a clause that speaks only to “process.” Instead, the right to keep and bear arms is a privilege of American citizenship that applies to the States through the Fourteenth Amendment ’s Privileges or Immunities Clause.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-1521.ZC1.html

Although I greatly admire Thomas as probably the best defender and advocate in the current Court that the Constitution must be the basis for SCOTUS decisions, I’m somewhat surprised by what I read in his dissents here about the intended scope fourteenth amendment.

He seems to be defending Washington’s opinion in Corfield v. Coryell, an opinion that Judge Robert Bork called “a singularly confused opinion in 1823 by a single Justice of the Supreme Court setting out his ideas of what the original privileges and immunities clause of article IV of the Constitution meant” (Bork, The Tempting of America, pg 181).

Bork summarizing the issue of the fourteenth amendment, says that according to Justice Miller in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the “fourteenth amendment thus has little reach beyond the protection of those who had been slaves” (id, pg37). “In a word, the history of the fourteenth amendment gave judges no guidance on any subject other than the protection of blacks” (id., pg38).

I agree with the understanding of the Tenth Amendment, that there are all kinds of rights and liberties not mentioned in the Constitution because they don’t have to be mentioned. The so-called “Bill of Rights” mentioned some of them because the anti-federalists threatened to block ratification of the Constitution without listing some of them. But it is simply a sampling of pre-existing rights among many that are not mentioned. Again, the persuasive authority of the Constitution is the assertion in the Declaration of Independence that individuals are born “with certain unalienable rights, that among them are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The default of right is with the states and the people, not with the feds.

So, I deny the feds have no true constitutional power to enforce the first ten amendments which includes no federal power to regulate individuals’ ownership of firearms unless the ownership threatens some other Constitutional provision (ex. violating the exclusive right of the feds to raise an army and declare war by raising a personal or state army and declaring war).

This should encourage you. The greatest threat to gun ownership isn't the states by a long shot. It's the feds. And as with so many other things, the feds are meddling in things they have no right nor power to meddle in.