[echempel]

Do states have a constitutional power to enact gun control? 14th amendment aside the answer appears to be yes. But I’m not sure what the right interpretation is when the 14th amendment is considered.

[tylerboyd49]

I’m anti-Incorporation Doctrine.. So I say it’s a state issue. Tennessee has a right to bear arms clause, so it’d be unconstitutional here. Californians have neglected to put such protections in their state constitution, so I’d say it’d be Constitutional (though immoral) there.

[maester_miller]

It will certainly be amusing to watch all the statists who have spent the last 100 years using the incorporation doctrine as the excuse for all sorts of federal meddling and power grabs suddenly do a complete 180 and start arguing for states rights and such.

[woods]

I disagree with the premise of the question, which is that the Fourteenth Amendment gives the impression that the states have the power to implement gun control. To the contrary, modern interpretations of the Fourteenth Amendment, by which the Bill of Rights was supposedly applied to the states, would hold the opposite: precisely because of the Fourteenth Amendment, the states may NOT engage in gun control, because the Second Amendment has now been applied to the states as well.

As a historical/constitutional matter I agree with CSA1861: the “incorporation doctrine,” which holds that the Fourteenth Amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the states, is a false doctrine, so no valid conclusion can be based on it.

[Author]

Posts