"Strabo" wrote in message
news
In OT Guns more Guns on Sun, 28 Nov 2004 00:37:51 -0500, by
Cliff, we read:

Hence, does the need for the 2nd still exist?

OTOH It might be an issue of State's Rights ...?

Except that states don't have 'rights'. Individuals
have Rights.

The BOR was included to obligate the Federal government
to ensure those Rights, to protect them.

Well, it was more like a promise by the federal government that it wouldn't
*abridge* them. That was why the anti-Federalists, and the states they
dominated, demanded a Bill of Rights in the first place.

It wasn't to "ensure" those rights over the heads of the states, although,
since the 14th Amendment, that has been the result in the case of most other
Amendments.

Not for collectives,
not for classes, not for states, but for each individual.

There are two uses of "rights" under Constitutional law, Strabo. The first
is the one you're talking about. The other is protections for states, or for
other authorities, against intrusion by other institutions of government.
Thus, "states' rights," a favorite phrase even among the most hard-boiled
originalists among Constitutional scholars and judges.

Ed Huntress