NFA Gun Trust Lawyer Blog
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued its eagerly anticipated ruling in Nordyke v. King
yesterday, holding that the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution protects the individual right to keep and bear arms against violation by state and local governments. The court upheld the ordinance and stated:
We therefore conclude that the right to keep and bear arms is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” Colonial revolutionaries, the Founders, and a host of commentators and lawmakers living during the first one hundred years of the Republic all insisted on the fundamental nature of the right. It has long been regarded as the “true palladium of liberty.” Colonists relied on it to assert and to win their independence, and the victorious Union sought to prevent a recalcitrant South from abridging it less than a century later. The crucial role this deeply rooted right has played in our birth and history compels us to recognize that it is indeed fundamental, that it is necessary to the Anglo-American conception of ordered liberty that we have inherited. We are therefore persuaded that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the Second Amendment and applies it against the states and local governments.
Many were hoping for a ruling forbidding states from abridging fundamental rights of citizens but the Ninth Circuit rejected this view in citing the Slaughter-House Cases as precedent. In doing so it applied the Second Amendment to the states through the 14th Amendment. Many are hopeful that the seemingly distorted view of the 14th Amendment will be changed one day to reflect its original interpretation.