ourteenth Amendment enforces the Second (3). The Fourteenth Amendment states: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. (From Amendment XIV section 1.1868)In this argument the NRA stresses that “no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” They feel that this clearly makes it unlawful for the state to pose restrictions on firearms which is a privilege that is given to the citizens of the United States in the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment has not yet been applied to the states, either directly or through incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the United States v. Cruickshank the United States Supreme Court in 1875 held that the Second Amendment restricts only Congress and the federal government; this was later affirmed by the same court in Presser v Illinois in 1886. Thus, the nature of the Second Amendment does not provide a right that is enforced by the Fourteenth Amendment. The courts view that the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to protect the states against the federal or national government, and not to create a personal right that either the state or federal authorities are bound to respect. Guarantees of individual liberties under federalism have two components: the federal constitution and state constitutions. Dependence should be first placed in the state’s Bill of Rights, declaration of rights, because the United States Supreme Court has explicitly acknowledged each state’s “sovereign right to adopt in it own Constitution individual liberties more expansive than those conferred by the Federal Constitution.”(7). The written content of most...
