From: Thomas Grant Edwards <tedwards@src.umd.edu>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 95 00:29:41 PST
To: "Timothy C. May" <tcmay@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: Pornography, What is it?
In-Reply-To: <199501110734.XAA16586@netcom20.netcom.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950111032338.5716A-100000@thrash.src.umd.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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On Tue, 10 Jan 1995, Timothy C. May wrote:

> The Amendment(s) may read "Congress shall make no law...," but the
> states are *not* in fact able to pass laws restricting freedom of speech,
> establish religions, quarter troops, and so on. Or, rather, they may
> go ahead and pass such laws, but the Supreme Court will generally
> strike them down as being "unconstitutional."

The 14th Amendment ensures that states shall not infringe on all 
"privileges and immunities" of citizens of the USA.  The Slaughterhouse 
cases created an interesting judgement that the 14th is not talking about 
all rights of American citizens, but only those coming directly from 
citizenship, thus the Supreme Court must explicitly "incorporate" parts 
of the Bill of Rights via the 14th Amendment to the States.  While 
freedom of speech has been "incorporated," the right to trial by jury has 
not, and neither has the Second Amendment for either individual right to 
keep and bear arms or collective (state government) right to keep and 
bear arms.

It is pretty obvious the 14th was established to limit the ability of 
State's to infringe on the civil rights of blacks.  After reading the 
Slaughterhouse cases, I side with the dissenting Justices and feel that 
it should apply to all rights mentioned in the Constitution.  But that 
isn't the law...

(This is a fairly commong thread on talk.politics.guns)

-Thomas