[quote]pushharder wrote:
Au contraire, hoss. I’m in no trouble at all. None whatsoever.[/quote]
That’s thr trouble - you are, and you don’t realize you are. Not ten minutes ago you still thought the BOR applied to the states from inception.
[quote]“Barron v. Baltimore’s simple rule, that the Bill of Rights applies only to the federal government and not to the states, was, in the words of Chief Justice Marshall, “not of much difficulty” – self-evident from the structure and literal language of the Constitution. [u]However, in spite of the Court’s ruling, state courts still interpreted the Bill of Rights as applying to their own governments, viewing them as reflections of the general laws in Anglo-American culture (“the common law”).[/u] The Supreme Court’s ruling in Barron prevailed in federal courts, however, until passage of the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War. Gradually since then, the Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment, which bans states from depriving citizens of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law,” as also incorporating – or applying – most of the amendments in the Bill of Rights against the states, including the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment. Modern constitutional law prohibits state governments from taking private property without just compensation.”
*emphasis mine[/quote]
Well, the “emphasis” doesn’t help you, though - many state constitutions were based on the federal one, and states incorporated many of the same rights as the federal BOR. But again, that doesn’t help you - that doesn’t mean the Second Amendment applied to the states at the time - it means states adopted similar and in some case identical rights as a matter of…wait for it…state law and policy. Which is fine, that isn’t all that novel. That is precisely the state power I’ve been referring to for five pages.
So, what you emphasized doesn’t mean what you want it to mean - these same states that tracked with federal BOR with its own state version still maintained some regulation of arms as a matter of history. It’s a fact. And each state was different - there was no uniformity as to the scope of the right among the states. It varied because states exercised their states’ rights to handle it their way, and Georgia had different laws than Maryland.
There is just no other way to say it - the Second Amendment did not apply to the states, and states did their own thing with respect to the right of arms. Until the passage of the 14th Amendment, there was no argument that states had basically plenary power to do what they wished in this area. Maybe that meant robust rights - maybe that meant higher regulation than you’d prefer. But what matters is…whatever they decided, states had the power to decide and were not restricted by the Second Amendment legally and constitutionally. Period.
Look, you just don’t know what you’re talking about here. You are starting with an ideological result you really like and want - “the universal right to own any arm you want was recognized since the Bill of Rights, regardless of federal or state!” - and then try and work backwards to justify the claim, and in doing so, you’re making a dog’s breakfast out of the actual facts and history, which you don’t know.