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Originally Posted by ReelinRod
Correct, the Bill of Rights did not have any weight on state law. This fact is what made the 14th Amendment necessary. After the Civil War, the Southern States enacted and enforced with brutality the Black Codes which forbade Blacks from owning arms. The "official" state militias were the enforcers of these laws and violated the rights of Freemen to the point that the 39th Congress disbanded the militias of several states. Of course, the violence continued; the militia members just put on hoods and continued harassing and killing Freemen.
The intent of the 14th Amendment was to finally enforce the federal amendments on the states and the right to arms was a primary reason.
Of course this was frustrated by the Supreme Court in 1873 where it gutted the "privileges or immunities" clause of the 14th Amendment. This only left "due process" and "equal protection" as the mechanism to enforce the Bill of Rights on the states.
This begat the "Selective Incorporation" doctrine because each claim of rights injury had to be painstakingly examined and the resulting decisions narrowly applied certain clauses of the 1st or the 4th or the 5th Amendments over many decades . . . The 2nd Amendment was not applied to the states -- "incorporated" against state law -- until 2010.
What's that saying? Justice delayed is justice denied. . .
The doctrines of supremacy and preemption cover conflicts in claims of power.
The right to arms has exactly the same kinds of "restrictions" . . . One can't brandish or threaten the use of a weapon, one can't shoot at someone without justification, one can not kill another person without justification.
Gun controllers are arguing for a much different "restriction" schedule to be pressed for guns . . . Broad proscriptions on simple ownership, registration with the government to exercise a right including licensing. Enacting bans on certain types of commonly owned arms and endorsing absolute bans on all operable guns based on geography.
Your equivalency fails, to put the kind of restrictions you want for guns on any other right would be laughed off as prior restraint.
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"The right to arms has exactly the same kinds of "restrictions" . . . One can't brandish or threaten the use of a weapon, one can't shoot at someone without justification, one can not kill another person without justification."
I don't think that's exactly true. Again, when some of the founding fathers were on the board of governors at the University Of Virginia, they passed a rule saying no guns were allowed on campus. They didn't say you could have a gun as long as you weren't threatening someone...they said you could not possess a gun on campus at all. The founding fathers apparently did not believe that such a ban was a violation of the second amendment.
I'm not someone who thinks the constitution is a living, evolving document. I prefer to think of what they meant, at the time it was crafted. The evidence seems compelling to me (we can disagree obviously), that they felt that certain restrictions in the name of public safety, are well within the intent of the second amendment.