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Not completely. They didn't implement the privileges and immunities defence of the 14th amendment clause from which it was taken. The subsequent free right of contracts would have reversed a lot more federal, local, and state control over their citizens beyond simply extending the equal supremacy of the 2nd amendment over local governments to that of the others (and for which such governments are also often in suspect legal grounds).
Seemed like a cop out to me. Justice Thomas had the balls to go all the way and implement an interpretation of the 14th Amendment that would have basically implied that States fall under all limitation of government under the Bill of Rights as they apply to the Federal government. And damn it, SunTzuSays beats me to it again!
Been following this one. Scalia is one major pain when he's "wrong".
What do you mean by Scalia being wrong?
See above partly. Scalia pretty much conceded on a usual point (substantive due process) that he ordinarily discards as invalid on other legal matters (meaning he wasn't being legally consistent and was therefore "wrong") and meanwhile ripped to shreds in arguments the point Thomas wrote on in concurrence (privileges and immunities), even though that point is clearly in the 14th Amendment and was understood to be at the time.
Slaughterhouse cases decided by a pre-14th era Court pretty much screwed us, but they could have overturned it instead of settling for a lazy way out.
The question was does the 2nd amendment have teeth. the answer was yes.
If you want the supreme court to rule on the 14th, then start a case on the 14th.
By making a simple answer to a question a complicated one is how we got to this mess in the first place. When will people start using common sense?
The people who brought the case DID in fact want the Supreme Court to rule on the 14th in addition to the 2nd. Try following the legal scene and you'd be aware of this. The question was whether you agreed with the ruling. It doesn't say what you have to agree with in particular (just says "guns", which is kind of vague from my view).
Alito's majority opinion doesn't quite give the 2nd amendment very much bite at all really. It simply overturns a lack of substantive due process claim. There's no broad and biting ruling of that without incorporating the 2nd explicitly under the 14th's privileges and immunities clause. The government can still maintain thousands of infringements on gun ownership rights. The only one that was explicitly overturned was an effective total handgun ban applied on all local private citizens as was done in DC two years ago and Chicago this year. Things like concealed carry laws, restrictions on types of guns ("assault rifles" for example), costs or tests for gun registration and licensing, carrying guns into many public places, etc are all still considered perfectly valid. Some may well be. But they remain untested and leave a lot of bite still on the table.
If that's enough teeth for you, then fine, congratulations you win a cookie. But that's not the whole story and people (like you) need to be aware of that.
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
That is the Second Amendment, word for word. What part of that common sense statement do you not comprehend or understand?
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
By your own implications, what you are saying is that the Court should have stated that ONLY this part of the 14th should be re-affirmed in their ruling? If so, do you know just what kind of a can of worms would have been opened? The people who brought this lawsuit against the city of Chicago only used this in their argument to enhance the validity of that argument and nothing more.
When we take to nit-picking the minds of men of great vision who existed more than two hundred years ago and try to put our own mentality to their thinking . . . Ya gotta stop and think what your doing as back then they even used the letter "f" in most cases to represent the letter "s". Their idea of the right to own and bear arms was simple and logical in their thinking. It all boils down to one thing – An armed citizenry controls its government, whereas a disarmed citizenry is controlled by that government. Common sense, pure and simple.
No, I'm saying that that part of the 14th amendment is considered currently void by the government because of legal precedents established in the late 19th century and early 20th. To me, is a huge deal that includes the incorporation of gun rights (as a trivial gain for me personally since I own no guns) as part of a much bigger right of associations. It was, for the lead lawyer, a big piece of the pie and obviously Thomas bit down on it. The main reason it was necessary is that there is still a huge grey area under which gun rights might be restricted or confined by local governments and various challenges under taken to defend them will still be necessary. The single decision on a broader scale would have swept a lot of that crap under the rug.
The "can of worms" argument is in fact exactly what Scalia was getting at. I think he's wrong and that the reverse is true. Allowing the government the ability and power to decide what rights we as citizens possess is far worse than allowing the citizens to decide what restrictions the government may place on those rights (while retaining the ability to rescind that control). That's the can of worms I'm concerned about. An armed citizenry that doesn't care about many of its inalienable rights is probably not much good at standing up for those rights when they are trampled upon, armed or not.
Also, I don't know what the "more 200 years ago" part has to do with anything. The 14th amendment wasn't ratified until after the Civil War and the Slaughterhouse court cases which defined its present scope were in the late 1870s. Perhaps you need to brush up on your American History?