So Little Time

So much to blog about and so little time.

Last night a fairly unorganized book club met at a local Dunkin' Donuts to discuss Uncivil War:  Five New Orleans Street Battles and the Rise and Fall of of Radical Reconstruction.  In that book are discussions of both Whites and Blacks arming themselves during the period of Reconstruction, in order to protect themselves and their families and homes.  Frankly, the book made me angry all over again about how the Union failed to properly secure the rights of Freedmen and how by the end of the 19th Century we had slipped into segregation across the South, but enough of that for now.

Thanks to a link on Instapundit I found myself at The Volokh Conspiracy, where David Kopel talked about a brief that was filed in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, "the case that will decide whether the 14th Amendment makes the 2d Amendment applicable to state and local governments."  Looked at another way, this is the natural outcome of the Heller case.  Since Heller was about the District of Columbia, a Federal entity, it did not automatically slide over to include other cities. Now the US Supreme Court may help us understand if it does or if the citizen's rights under the Second Amendment can be denied by State or local governments.

The brief, to be found here, goes after the Slaughter-House Cases of 1873 and suggests that based upon the right and the need of Blacks, following the Civil War, to keep and bear arms, the Slaughter-House Cases was, in fact, decided too narrowly.  So, in 2009 we are talking about how rights in the Reconstruction and Post-Reconstruction era, following the Civil War, are still of interest today.

This is all great stuff!  But, then I am not a lawyer.  I will send the URL out to a lawyer who has been a card carrying member of both the ACLU and the NRA and see if that person has any thoughts.

Regards  —  Cliff