FR: Never Accept the Premise of Your Opponent’s Argument
From related threads …
To begin with, federal laws reasonably based on powers expressly amended to the Constitution by the states trump state constitutions and state laws.
"Article VI, Clause 2: This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding [emphases added]."
Next, note that the 14th Amendment (14A) expressly gives Congress the specific power make sure that the states respect rights that the states amend the Constitution to expressly protect.
Regarding the 2nd Amendment (2A), the congressional record shows that Rep. John Bingham, the main author of Section 1 of 14A had included 2A when he read the Bill of Rights as examples of enumerated rights that 14A applies to the states.
From the 14th Amendment:
"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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; 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.”
"Section 5: The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
John Bingham, Congressional Globe. (See 2nd Amendment (Article II) from Bingham's clarification about in middle of 2nd column.)
So the feds have the express constitutional authority to prohibit abridgment of constitutionally enumerated rights by the states regardless what state constitutions and politically correct state gun-control laws say about public safety for example.
A previous generation of Supreme Court justices had put it this way about Congress exercising its 14A powers to strengthen constitutionally enumerated protections.
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
H O W E V E R …
We are still stuck with a corrupt, post-17th Amendment ratification Congress that has been wrongly ignoring its constitutionally enumerated duty to stop activist states from abridging constitutionally enumerated rights, career federal lawmakers predictably not lifting a finger to strengthen 2A rights in NM in this example, and risk not getting reelected by doing so.
The remedy for this problem is the following.
Patriots in all states to come to rescue of pro-2A NM citizens by doing the following.
Patriots need to elect a new patriot Congress in 2020 elections that will not only promise to support PDJT's vision for MAGA, but will also promise to do its duty to exercise its 14A powers to strengthen constitutionally enumerated rights from abridgment by state actors, New Mexico's overreach on 2A in this example.
Remember in November 2020!
MAGA!
Corrections, insights welcome.
Article II, § 6 of the Constitution of New Mexico provides:
No law shall abridge the right of the citizen to keep and bear arms for security and defense, for lawful hunting and recreational use and for other lawful purposes, but nothing herein shall be held to permit the carrying of concealed weapons. No municipality or county shall regulate, in any way, an incident of the right to keep and bear arms.