Jim March
March 22, 2003, 03:34 AM
There was no new legislation needed.
OK, here's what they DON'T teach in school:
Timeline:
* Back in 1856, the US Supreme Court decided that America was a racist nation, always had been, and therefore racist laws were OK. That was the Dred Scott decision. It was morally horrendous but "legally correct for it's time".
To quote one key piece of Dred Scott:
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For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.
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Pay particular attention to that phrase "privileges and immunities". The 1856 court used it no less than 31 times as a complete phrase, exhaustively defining it as "every personal freedom in the Bill Of Rights and THEN some" (note the "right to travel without pass or passport" - that's one of the "traditional rights of free Englishmen").
URL for Dred Scott:
http://laws.findlaw.com/us/60/393.html
* The US Civil War ran from 1861 to 1865. Slavery wasn't the only issue, but it was a big one. (We may get some argument on that, but bear with me here.)
* Right at the end of the war, the 13th Amendment passed freeing the slaves. But that alone didn't overturn Dred Scott! America may have ceased to be a slave nation, but it was still a RACIST nation and the Southern states immediately passed racist laws of every description, weapons bans specifically aimed at blacks being the most common type.
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Mississippi statute of 1865:
"[N]o freedman, free negro or mulatto, not in the military service of the United States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk or bowie knife, and on conviction thereof in the county court shall be punished by fine, not exceeding ten dollars, and pay the cost of such proceedings, and all such arms or ammunition shall be forfeited to the informer; and it shall be the duty of every civil and military officer to arrest any freedman, free negro, or mulatto found with any such arms or ammunition, and cause him or her to be committed to trial in default of bail."
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* By 1868, reports of Southern behavior against newly freed blacks plus any white Union sympathizers led to the creation of the 14th Amendment. To overturn Dred Scott's declaration that America was a "racist nation", the 14th Amendment deliberately used the court's language "in reverse". Dred Scott is essentially the key to understanding the 14th Amendment's opening paragraph:
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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. [B]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. [emphasis added]
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* But guess what else the 1868 legislature did? They wrote "enabling legislation" to put TEETH into the 14th Amendment, via a mechanism for punishing any sumbich who violated somebody's civil rights. IT'S STILL ON THE BOOKS. After various code revisions, it's now known as 42USC1983 and 42USC1985:
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42 United States Code Sec. 1983 - Civil action for deprivation of rights Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer's judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable. For the purposes of this section, any Act of Congress applicable exclusively to the District of Columbia shall be considered to be a statute of the District of Columbia.
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42 United States Code Sec. 1985. Conspiracy to interfere with civil rights
-STATUTE-
(1) Preventing officer from performing duties.
If two or more persons in any State or Territory conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof; or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave any State, district, or place, where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties;
(2) Obstructing justice; intimidating party, witness, or juror.
If two or more persons in any State or Territory conspire to deter, by force, intimidation, or threat, any party or witness in any court of the United States from attending such court, or from testifying to any matter pending therein, freely, fully, and truthfully, or to injure such party or witness in his person or property on account of his having so attended or testified, or to influence the verdict, presentment, or indictment of any grand or petit juror in any such court, or to injure such juror in his person or property on account of any verdict, presentment, or indictment lawfully assented to by him, or of his being or having been such juror; or if two or more persons conspire for the purpose of impeding, hindering, obstructing, or defeating, in any manner, the due course of justice in any State or Territory, with intent to deny to any citizen the equal protection of the laws, or to injure him or his property for lawfully enforcing, or attempting to enforce, the right of any person, or class of persons, to the equal protection of the laws;
(3) Depriving persons of rights or privileges.
If two or more persons in any State or Territory conspire or go in disguise on the highway or on the premises of another, for the purpose of depriving, either directly or indirectly, any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws, or of equal privileges and immunities under the laws; or for the purpose of preventing or hindering the constituted authorities of any State or Territory from giving or securing to all persons within such State or Territory the equal protection of the laws; or if two or more persons conspire to prevent by force, intimidation, or threat, any citizen who is lawfully entitled to vote, from giving his support or advocacy in a legal manner, toward or in favor of the election of any lawfully qualified person as an elector for President or ice President, or as a Member of Congress of the United States; or to injure any citizen in person or property on account of such support or advocacy; in any case of conspiracy set forth in this section, if one or more persons engaged therein do, or cause to be done, any act in furtherance of the object of such conspiracy, whereby another is injured in his person or property, or deprived of having and exercising any right or privilege of a citizen of the United States, the party so injured or deprived may have an action for the recovery of damages occasioned by such injury or deprivation, against any one or more of the conspirators.
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They also put in Federal criminal penalties, these are examples of the civil law penalties (letting people sue for damages). Ehhh...I can't remember where the Fed criminal law stuff is. :banghead:
Anyways. Point is, by the time the 14th Amendment started to get "resurrected" around 1954 (Brown vs. Board of Education) and then Martin Luther King Jr. and company started running around, there was no need to come up with new legislation because an effort to do everything MLKJr was up to had died out in 1876, complete with laws!
But...wait...what the hell HAPPENED to that earlier effort! It died out, that's what.
Who killed it?
The United States Supreme Court, in 1876.
The case was US vs. Cruikshank. ALL y'all need to read it:
http://laws.findlaw.com/us/92/542.html
Cruikshank was a distinctly pro-KKK decision.
To quote the US Congress official history page:
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From: http://www.constitutioncenter.org/sections/history/19th.asp
The Supreme Court decided the case of United States v. Cruikshank in 1876. The case grew out of a brutal massacre of blacks in the little Louisiana town of Colfax.
In Colfax whites burned the court house and murdered an unknown number of blacks. After the U.S. Army restored order, a federal grand jury indicted 72 white men. The United States Attorney brought nine to trial and won a conviction against William Cruikshank and two others.
Normally the federal government does not prosecute persons charged with murder. Control of ordinary crime has traditionally been the job of the states. In this case the U.S. Attorney used the 1870 Enforcement Act. This law makes it a crime for two or more persons to band together with intent to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any citizen.
The Supreme Court threw out the convictions of Cruikshank and his cohorts. As it had in the Slaughterhouse Cases, the Court acted to protect states' power. "Every republican government," Chief Justice Morrison Remick Waite wrote, "is in duty bound to protect all its citizens." He then added, "That duty was originally assumed by the States; and it still remains there."
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Got that? Local cops violated people's rights under the 1st Amendment (freedom of assembly), 2nd Amendment (disarmed 'em for the specific purpose of killing 'em) and 15th Amendment (gave blacks the right to vote, which is what caused the riot) and according to the USSC, there wasn't squat the Feds could do about it.
By the time of LBJ's presidency, the basic principle in Cruikshank had been overturned, because certain civil rights in the Bill Of Rights had been "selectively incorporated" against the states, such as the 1st Amendment, the criminal due process stuff plus the right to vote.
But "selective incorporation" was a way of "fixing" the earlier crappy decisions like Cruikshank by supporting those civil rights the courts were "comfortable with".
So which civil right do you suspect the USSC has NOT decided they "like" yet?
Yup. Guessed it in one. The 2nd Amendment.
Guess which court case the gun-grabbers use as "authority" for the idea that the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to the states?
That's right.
CRUIKSHANK.
The same case that allowed the KKK to thrive in the first place, and killed off the original attempt to make the US a genuinely free and equal society is one of the two pillars of ALL gun control legislation in America.
Jim March
March 22, 2003, 05:16 AM
Let me add one more thing, if it's not obvious yet:
If the "privileges and immunities of US citizenship" include the right to arms per Dred Scott, and as of 1868 blacks were declared citizens AND the "privileges and immunities" could not be curtailed against them, that has another major implication:
They didn't have the vote yet! That wasn't until the 15th Amendment a few years later.
In 1868, blacks were given "civil rights" but not "political rights", putting them in the same boat as white women who didn't yet have the vote either.
Therefore, the right to arms being given to blacks was a "personal right to defend against criminals and KKK", versus a "political right connected with militia duty". The whole "right of the people to keep and bear arms" was being *separated* from the "well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State" part.
So we don't even need to get into what the 2nd Amendment meant in 1791; what matters even more is the post-1868 meaning and that's absolutely, 100% guaranteed an individual right.
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