Ironic part is how anti gun that state seems to be but I guess pro illegal alien is more important than anti gun......not that their anti gun stance has done anything about crime just look at Chicago....
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No, the Fourteenth Amendment doesn’t specifically grant any rights.Originally posted by Bill View Post
You would have to look at history which is typically what the Supreme Court does and the debate on the “intent” of the article or amendment.
An example is the Supreme Court cases of DC v. Heller and also the recent case of NYSRPA v. Bruen. In those cases the Supreme Court ruled that gun laws had to be viewed from the perspective at the time of the Second Amendment. So the argument (in the Supreme Court’s opinion) that auto or semiautomatic weapons could be banned because they didn’t exist in the late 1700s is invalid. They used the phrase of weapons “in common use”.
Another 2A example would be Caetano v. Massachusetts from 2016. Ms. Caetano was convicted in Massachusetts for possessing a stun gun. Massachusetts tried to claim that electronic weapons did not exist during the Founding Father era so could not be protected by the 2A. A unanimous Supreme Court ruled that stun guns were in common use and were covered under the Second Amendment, which was not necessarily just firearms and also covered knives, stun, guns, clubs, etc. That was the “intent” of the 2A.
So when was the Fourteenth Amendment passed? It was in 1868. What was significant about that you might ask? it was almost immediately after the Civi War. But let’s step back a bit further, to 3 years before the Civil War.
In Dred Scott V Sanford in 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that Africans could never be citizens so they had no rights to sue for their freedom or anything else because even if a free man, they were not and could not be citizens. Not a citizen equalled no rights.
That is significant.
So a couple of years later, the Civil War started and when it ended in 1865, the 13th 14th and 15th amendments are passed. These 3 amendments were a direct result of the Civil War and cases like Dred Scott.
The southern states after the war basically viewed it as, okay , you freed the slaves but we don’t have to give them any rights, they aren’t citizens. Certainly in some places that attitude continued until at least the mid 1900s and the Civil Rights era.
The Thirteenth Amendment freed all slaves and the Fifteenth Amendment gave Africans and Blacks the right to vote.
So what did the Fourteenth Amendment specifically say at the end of Section 1 said:
“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
What is significant about that and why did Congress use the word “person” and not “citizen”?
It is simple. Because if you just said that a person was not a citizen and therefore had no rights, a state could deny them any rights. Note again that it covers “any person within its jurisdiction”.
So at the time of the Fourteenth Amendment, what was the intent of not simply giving rights to citizens? It was because if you were within the jurisdiction of the United States and any particular state, you could not arbitrarily deny peoples right to sue or have rights protect them. If today a person is not a citizen, can a police officer beat or kill them with no repercussions because they have no rights? That is what Dred Scott basically said.
I don’t think it was accidental that the US Congress, right after the Civil War accidentally used the term “person” instead of “citizen” when their entire intent was to protect people who were not citizens or not White.
So I think the premise that “person” could be read as “citizen” is not a valid viewpoint or within the intent of the amendment. They knew exactly what they were passing and it wasn’t an oversight.
in my opinion …..
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Guessing this sounded better in your head... That percentage would be 100 by your own description of them.Originally posted by Danno View PostComment
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