Only if those boundaries are individually self-governing!
And they are not, since California and New York cannot outlaw handguns due to the influence of Wyoming and Idaho.
And as soon as you say "well the voters in Wyoming and Idaho deserve...", you've dropped any pretense of the internal boundaries mattering, because we're now just talking about federal representation, where those citizens have disproportionately large representation.
California and New York cannot ban hand guns because of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights. Prior to this concept the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government. The States were free to ban guns if they wanted.
Correct, a (functional) amendment to the constitution made by the supreme court and unable to be overturned except by that body, due to the inability to amend our constitution. This is decidedly not an argument against anything I've said.
I wasn't making an argument against the point you were trying to convey, but the argument you were using. It is not Wyoming and Idaho's fault, but an erroneous understanding of the 14th amendment that caused California to lose the right to ban guns.
If the incorporation of the bill of Rights never happened California could ban not just handguns but every gun they wanted.
I agree that Wyoming, Idaho and like minded states are stopping an amendment repealing the 2nd amendment. The easier way to get rid of guns in California is to push for no incorporation of the 2nd amendment. The Supreme Court could do it if they wanted. You literally just need to convince 5 people.
I mean I think that incorporation has a clearer constitutional basis than heller, but I see your point.
It also doesn't help that the constitution is unpleasantly vague in many places. It is a legal document, the chief legal document in fact, and yet we are forced to define legality based not so much on the text but on the vibe of the text (and yes this is true even if you are a textualist!), because the text isn't precise about what it means.
>I mean I think that incorporation has a clearer constitutional basis than heller, but I see your point
I hold the opposite view as you can probably tell.
>It also doesn't help that the constitution is unpleasantly vague in many places.
I think the problem is people have a misconstrued understanding of the role of the federal government based on erroneous court decisions.
We are now in a situation where people think the federal government can do anything except what is banned in the Constitution. This is one of the reasons why some of the founders were opposed to the Bill of Rights. They knew this exact situation would happen. Instead of thinking the government is allowed to do what is granted to them (enumerated powers) people now think the government can do anything that is not banned.
The federal government is allowed to do 27 things and nothing more. The courts have consistently allowed the government to do more and more and interpreted things exactly opposite of what it says (Wickard v Filburn for example).
Another issue is some people look at other countries and assume the US federal government should be able to act in the same way. We see this all the time. We have people saying the US is the only developed country without X. The problem is X isn't supposed to be done by the federal government, you have to look at what the States do.
Sorry about rambling. Not sure if I fully responded to you.
They cant outlaw guns (lets not pretend) because humans have the inalienable right to -defend- themselves. And that includes against a tyrannical government. The United States would not exist otherwise[1].
Given the way you're intentionally missing the point, I think it's clear my argument hit the mark. And jutt to further clarify, it's completely possible to ban things that someone can manufacture. I'm not sure what makes you think otherwise.
