Is the Constitution supposed to protect the right to bear arms?
Are individual states supposed to be able to take such rights and freedoms away when the federal laws are supposed to protect such rights?
(What to marry rights and carry rights have in common? The Fourteenth Amendment, according to the Supreme Court.)
The U.S. Supreme Court has just extended gay marriage to all 50 states. The Supreme Court ruled Friday that same-sex couples have a right to marry nationwide, in a historic decision that invalidates gay marriage bans in more than a dozen states. Gay and lesbian couples already can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia.
The court’s ruling on Friday means the remaining 14 states, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage. The outcome is the culmination of two decades of Supreme Court litigation over marriage, and gay rights generally. You can peruse the full ruling here, but the meat of the activist Court’s over-long decision hinges on a single paragraph.
The Court used Section 1 of the Fourteen Amendment to justify their argument, which reads: Amendment XIV Section 1. “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.”
* (The Supreme Court basically decided that a minority of states cannot deprive citizens of rights held in the majority of states.)
By using the Constitution in such a manner, the Court argues that the Due Process Clause extends “certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy” accepted in a majority of states across the state lines of a handful of states that still banned the practice.
* (This can and should apply to all laws, like gun carry permits, and not just gay marriage.)
The vast majority of states are “shall issue” on the matter of issuing concealed carry permits, and enjoy reciprocity with a large number of other states. My North Carolina concealed carry permit, for example, was recognized yesterday as being valid in 36 states, which just so happened to be the number of states in which gay marriage was legal yesterday. But 14 states did not recognize my concealed carry permit yesterday. Today they must.
Using the same “due process clause” argument as the Supreme Court just applied to gay marriage, my concealed carry permit must now be recognized as valid in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. I’ll be driving through the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York in several weeks, places that until yesterday I did not have a legal right to concealed carry. As of today, with this decision, it would seem that these states and the District must honor my concealed carry permit, or violate my constitutional rights under the 14th and Second Amendment. God Bless America.
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