"This is no time for the court to start picking and choosing when it comes to the Bill of Rights."
In an editorial this week, The Los Angeles Times argues that even gun control advocates should favor the Supreme Court applying the Second Amendment to the states:
If you support measures to reduce gun violence, as this page does, it's tempting to hope that the court will rule that states aren't bound by the 2nd Amendment. The problem is that allowing states (and cities) to ignore this part of the Bill of Rights could undermine the requirement that they abide by others.
Landmark civil liberties decisions spanning eight decades were possible only because the justices concluded that key protections of the Bill of Rights applied to the states, because those rights were "incorporated" by the 14th Amendment….
This is no time for the court to start picking and choosing when it comes to the Bill of Rights.
Of course, the Supreme Court had already spent quite a few decades "picking and choosing when it comes to the Bill of Rights." It was only last year in Heller that the Court definitively recognized that the Second Amendment protects an individual right. But still, it's nice to see so many folks now coming around to the whole Bill of Rights.
For more on why the Court should strike down Chicago's gun ban, see here, here, and here.
