You Have The Right… Until She Says You’re Wrong

You could also file this post under Mr. Crazy Has Friends (v4.0). I am not alone in reacting with abject paranoia to His Paleness’ latest presidential act. The nomination of Sonia Sortamediocre to the Supreme Court is going to cause yet another run on guns and ammo (just when I thought we were about to crawl out of the first run arising from 44’s election).

It turns out there is a very peculiar problem with the US Constitution. It turns out that the Bill of Rights only limits what the federal government can do, not what the states can do. I never thought about that. (Apparently I’m not the constitutional scholar I thought I was. Accordingly, through links in this post I’m referring the reader to several sources above this blog’s pay grade that illuminate on the subject.) But for the sake of the post, let me summarize the debate thus: There are two camps of thought on the subject of “incorporation”. One camp holds to incorporation because the 14th Amendment prohibits any state from “abridging” the “privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States” afforded in the Bill of Rights. The other camp asserts that the Bill of Rights applies only to federal citizenship and that states may (in effect) abridge those rights.

Judge Sottovoce is one of only three (out of 170) federal appellate court judges to rule that the Bill of Rights are not “incorporated” – may be abridged by states. In a landmark case (Maloney v. Cuomo), the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals (in New York on which bench the named judge sits) decreed that … “the Second Amendment does not apply to the States and therefore impose[s] no limitations on New York’s ability to prohibit the possession”… of certain weapons (in this case nunchucks – you read that right). Going further, the court said, “It is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right.”

Settled law? Here’s what the 14th Amendment actually says (in part): “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; 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.” Now that is “settled law.

As previously suggested, the Leader of the Free World has declared war on Freedom itself and is now appointing judges to ensure that we lose what we do not defend. I suggest that you get yourself to a gun shop near you and drop some significant coin on a memento of a-time-soon-gone-by.