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>>>DAVE KOPEL: The McDonald case is a hugely significant case because that is a case where
the Supreme Court rules that State and local governments have to respect second amendment
rights.
The original Bill of Rights, as it was written and interpreted by the Supreme Court, was
a limitation only on the federal government. Later, after the civil war and all the trouble
that had caused, Congress and the American people acting in through their state legislatures
in ratifying new amendments, said, “We need to get to the cause of this problem which
was for one thing, slavery.” That’s when the 13th amendment was passed, and for another
thing, the problem of State or local governments violating the National Citizenship Rights
of Americans, including the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
And so the 14th amendment was passed precisely for this purpose to protect, to give our federal
constitution a tool to prevent state local governments from violating these important
National Citizenship Rights.
Now, unfortunately, the Supreme Court quickly messed up the amendment but to make a long
story short, and the long story is if you took my Advanced Constitutional Law class
at DU, we cover the whole thing.
But the Supreme Court over the 20th century, began putting saying the States have to obey
the Bill of Rights, and they did it one right at a time, and by now they have gotten through
almost all of the Bill of Rights to do that, and McDonald was the case where they did it
for the second amendment.
There are still few parts of the Bill of Rights that don’t apply to the States, for example
the excessive fines, provision of the 8th amendment, or the Grand Jury requirement in
the 5th amendment, but today almost all of the Bill of Rights is applicable to the States
because the 14th amendment of the constitution makes it so.