At the time of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the states recognized that the Amendment would bestow on Blacks the right to keep and bear arms. The arguments hoisted against the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment had much to do with the right to keep and bear arms for Blacks. States passed Black Codes specifically to address this fact.
If the understanding was that the Fourteenth Amendment would incorporate the right to keep and bear arms at the time of its passage, why would that same fact not apply now? Why would that fact be well understood at the time of the writing of the Amendment and so misunderstood now?
Ref. The Racist Roots of Gun Control, Clayton E. Cramer, (Kan. J.L. & Pub. Pol'y, Winter 1995, at 17)
__________________
Gun Control: The premise that a woman found in an alley, raped and strangled with her own pantyhose, is morally superior to allowing that same woman to defend her life with a firearm.
"Science is built up with facts, as a house is with stones. But a collection of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house." - Jules Henri Poincare
"Three thousand people died on Sept. 11 because eight pilots were killed"
-- former Northwest Airlines pilot Stephen Luckey
|