EAST ST. LOUIS – Supporters of Gov. Pritzker’s gun law committed serious error by claiming the Fourteenth Amendment changed the Second Amendment’s meaning, according to the Second Amendment Law Center.
The center’s counsel Dan Peterson wrote on March 17 that, “The Constitution’s meaning is fixed according to the understanding of the founders.”
He claimed case law and quotations in a brief from Everytown for Gun Safety establishing 1868 as the pertinent year were illusory.
He moved to file the center’s brief as friend of U. S. district court, where District Judge Stephen McGlynn has consolidated four suits challenging the law.
Everytown filed its brief as friend of the court, focusing on 1868 as the year when ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment applied the Bill of Rights to the states.
Peterson claimed the argument was directly contrary to Supreme Court precedent in Second amendment cases and other cases.
“When it has been necessary to look to history for original meaning, the Court has always looked to the time of the original ratification of the Bill of Rights in 1791,” he wrote.
He claimed each provision of the Bill of Rights means the same thing when applied against the states as it does when applied against the federal government.
Peterson claimed the Supreme Court concluded that the Second Amendment protects arms in common use or typically possessed by law abiding citizens for lawful purposes.
It would be improper for a lower court to examine historic analogues and the job of federal courts is to faithfully apply Supreme Court precedents and reasoning, he added.
He claimed Everytown didn’t cite a single Supreme Court case holding that 1868 rather than 1791 is the proper time to determine original meaning.
He also claimed the time of ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment has nothing to do with the original public understanding of the Second Amendment.
Peterson quoted a recent Supreme Court decision that, “Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them.”
“To adopt the position advocated by the Everytown brief would overturn the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on incorporation for all provisions of the Bill of Rights,” he wrote.
He claimed case law that Everytown relied on was baseless and illogical.
Peterson added that the Second Amendment can’t have one meaning when applied against the federal government and a different meaning when incorporated against the states.
He claimed the Supreme Court conclusively established that principle in 1964, in Malloy v. Hogan, and the Court adhered to it ever since.
Second Amendment Law Center has headquarters in Henderson, Nevada.
Peterson wrote that it promotes and defends the individual right to keep and bear arms and educates the public about the social utility of private firearm ownership.
He stated it publishes accurate and truthful historical and technical information.