Killing Slaughterhouse

From Reason Magazine on the upcoming Chicago gun ban case, and the possibility that the Supreme Court will overturn its own 1873 Slaughterhouse Cases precedent as part of finding that the Second Amendment applies to the states via the Fourteenth Amendment's 'privileges or immunities' clause:

... As Damon Root explained at Reason back in February, getting rid of Slaughterhouse and restoring the 14th Amendment to its originally intended reach would do more than just make room for imposing Second Amendment restrictions on state governments: “The 14th Amendment was specifically designed and ratified to protect a sweepingly libertarian idea of self-ownership. That idea includes the right to acquire property, run a business, and buy and sell labor without unnecessary or improper interference by the government.”

And that’s exactly why Gura’s kill-Slaughterhouse move is so controversial. Some of the amici briefs in the case—meant, remember, to support his victory in McDonald—have even argued strenuously against the main means Gura is relying on to win.

Since, as Gura wrote in the brief, “In 1868, the ‘privileges’ and ‘immunities’ of American citizenship were popularly understood to include a broad array of pre-existent natural rights believed secured by all free governments, as well as the personal rights memorialized in the Bill of Rights,” some right-leaning legal scholars and organizations that want to vindicate the Second Amendment are afraid of a Court emboldened via the Privileges or Immunities Clause to do some serious thinking—and acting—on the basis of such a “broad array of pre-existent natural rights.” ...

Read the article here.