Question about McDonald Vs. Chicago

[bigalexe]

Taken from the wikipedia article

In addition to claiming the 2nd amendment should be incorporated through the selective incorporation process, McDonald is unique among post-Heller gun cases in that it is asking the court to overturn the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases. Slaughterhouse determined that the 14th Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause did not apply the Bill of Rights to the actions of states (and by extension, local governments). If overturned, the Selective Incorporation process would be moot and unnecessary, as the entire Bill of Rights, including the 2nd Amendment, would be applied against the states.

What I think when I read this is:

Why doesn't the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution apply to rights as well as laws? The Supremacy Clause states that Federal Laws take superiority over states laws, so therefore I don't see how you can justify NOT applying the Bill of Rights (Federal Law) to state laws and regulations.

 

[unspellable]

14th

You would think that after the passage of the 14th the entire incorporation issue would be a dead horse.

 

[Frank Ettin]

...Why doesn't the Supremacy Clause in the Constitution apply to rights as well as laws? The Supremacy Clause states that Federal Laws take superiority over states laws, so therefore I don't see how you can justify NOT applying the Bill of Rights (Federal Law) to state laws and regulations....

You would think that after the passage of the 14th the entire incorporation issue would be a dead horse.

The short answer is that's just not the way things are.

Cliff Notes version of the way things actually are --

In the early 19th century (Barron v. Baltimore, 1833), the Supreme Court ruled that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. It applied only to the federal government. However, in the late 19th century, well after the adoption of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court began to apply the Bill of Rights in a piecemeal fashion to the states through the 14th Amendment. This process is known as "incorporation" -- selected rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights have been "incorporated" into the 14th Amendment and thus applied to the states.

Some provisions of the 1st Amendment were not applied to the states until the 1930s and 1940s. Many procedural protections available to criminal defendants in federal court under the Bill of Rights were not available to defendants in state courts until the 1960s. Some enumerated rights, like the 5th Amendment right to indictment by grand jury, and the 7th Amendment right to a jury trial in civil cases, have not been found applicable to the states.

 

[bigalexe]

If I had the resources I'd find a way to make a case arguing the Bill of Rights applies to every American. Damned are my small and shallow pockets!

Upon further investigation I have found that the case overturning part of (Barron v. Baltimore, 1833) was (Gitlow v. New York, 1925) in which the First Amendment was extended to the states. The case was pretty much that the guy was a communist and advocate of overthrowing the government, so he was charged with something like sedition.