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Due Process, Equal Protection with Privileges or Immunities…John Bingham’s invaluable Gift to Americans
He was appointed to sit as an Assistant Judge Advocate General for the President Lincoln assassination trial, a prosecutor for the Andrew Johnson impeachment trials and an ex-member of the Opposition party (those opposed to the expansion of slavery) finally becoming a Republican Senator for the state of Ohio. I’m speaking of John Bingham, whom left his legacy in the history annals United States of America’s Constitution and is known as the framer for the 14th amendment and its key clauses for equality. The Amendment that has some of the most significant clauses relating to civil rights and addressing control laws, three of which are the Due Process clause, the Equal Protection clause and the Privileges and Immunities clause.
The Due Process clause:
prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken to make sure fairness.
The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment serves three distinct functions in modern constitutional doctrine: “First, it incorporates [against the States] specific protections defined in the Bill of Rights….Second, it has a substantive component, sometimes called ‘substantive due process.’…Third, it is a guarantee of fair procedure, sometimes called ‘procedural due process.
The Equal Protection Clause was specifically added for states that had black codes.
Black codes were, many laws enacted in the states of the former Confederacy after the American Civil War, in 1865 and 1866. These laws were designed to replace the social controls of slavery that had been removed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, and were thus intended to assure continuance of white supremacy. Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson, was president during this time and his southern sensibilities allowed a leniency towards the southern states feeling comfortable and well within their right to enact such blatantly discriminating laws.
The Equal Protection Clause as John Bingham clarified it’s meaning was:
The Magna Charta “gave the protection of the laws only to freemen” while the Fifth Amendment used “more comprehensive words, ‘no person’” shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. And thus,“the people by their Constitution declared the equality of all men, and by the express limitation forbade the Government of the United States from making any discrimination.”
Privileges and Immunities Clause in Article Four of the original unamended Constitution was the inspiration of Bingham’s to drafted the Privileges or Immunities Clause, which reads:
The Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of each state all privileges and Immunities of citizens in the several states…..
or in other words:No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or Immunities of citizens of the United States….
on April 28 of 1866, the Joint Committee of Fifteen voted in favor of a second draft proposed by Congressman Bingham, which would ultimately be adopted into the Constitution, along with the rest of the Fourteenth Amendment, this clause became part of the Constitution on July 9, 1868.
John Bingham’s contribution to the Constitution for the United States of America is so invaluable that you would think his name would be one of common knowledge, it isn’t, at least outside of legal circles, but his legacy lives on and still holds strong, as the 14th Amendment is cited in more litigation than any other amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Correlate this very brief delving into the history of the 14th Amendment with the present outcry for a quick solution to crimes committed by criminals with guns, and you can see why there is such a large outcry put forth by pro-second amendment advocates raised up in voices to defend the right to bear arms and stop the oppression of gun control legislation. It would behoove all Americans to be more aware of their history on gun control and it’s relation to civil rights, only then perhaps, one may see the value of this freedom, which can protect even the other freedoms.
I should also mention that one of the most significant uses of the 14th amendment’s Privileges or Immunities clause was by Justice Clarence Thomas in the McDonald v Chicago case, stating in his written opinion:
“In my view, the record makes plain that the Framers of the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the ratifying-era public understood — just as the Framers of the Second Amendment did — that the right to keep and bear arms was essential to the preservation of liberty,” Thomas wrote. “The record makes equally plain that they deemed this right necessary to include in the minimum baseline of federal rights that the Privileges or Immunities Clause established in the wake of the War over slavery.”
Second Amendment Duel on American’s Right to Bear Arms!
Show you how the left and their worshiped leaders always find a tragedy to manipulate for their cause, all this gun control as many conservatives know is not NEW! The underlying causes are not NEW to what happened in Newtown Ct. The method, the motivation and that they don’t address the true cause for the effect that affects everyone is not NEW! Change isn’t a verb to them by action it’s a damn noun to buy votes! Democrats never have a plan for a real change, so what they do try to change are the fundamental rights which this nation was built upon! Those same rights that allow them to even speak in such a treasonous matter towards their own constitution!
I am basically writing this brief to share the writings of a professor and expert criminologist that I have the utmost respect for his writings and views on gun ownership. You may also be surprised to know it has been confirmed through his own words that he is a democrat and belongs to several liberal groups such as the ACLU and Amnesty International. Dr. Kleck grew up in Lombard Illinois, a state that I grew up in and now live in, also one of the strictest gun law states in the Nation and has some serious high crime in its largest city, Chicago.
This report is from 1991 by Dr. Gary Kleck a criminologist that has testified before Congress and State legislators on gun control. The Supreme Court used his research in the landmark case of the District of Columbia v Heller decision which struck down the D.C. handgun ban and upheld the Second Amendment to the Constitution. (1)
“Gun control is a very minor, though not entirely irrelevant, part of the solution to the violence problem, just as guns are of only very minor significance as a cause of the problem. The U.S. has more violence than other nations for reasons unrelated to its extraordinarily high gun ownership. Fixating on guns seems to be, for many people, a fetish which allows them to ignore the more intransigent causes of American violence, including its dying cities, inequality, deteriorating family structure, and the all pervasive economic and social consequences of a history of slavery and racism. And just as gun control serves this purpose for liberals, equally useless “get tough” proposals, like longer prison terms, mandatory sentencing, and more use of the death penalty serve the purpose for conservatives. All parties to the crime debate would do well to give more concentrated attention to more difficult, but far more relevant, issues like how to generate more good-paying jobs for the underclass which is at the heart of the violence problem.”~Gary Kleck/Criminologist, author and advocate.
http://www.catb.org/esr/guns/point-blank-summary.html
Here too are some other of Dr. Kleck’s findings during later studies:
- For every use of a gun to commit a crime, there are three-to-four cases of guns being used in self-defense of a crime.
- Assault and robbery rates are lower when victims are armed with a gun.
- A gun is used in self-defense to protect its owner from crime 2.5 million times per year, an average of once every 13 seconds.
- Fifteen percent of the gun defenders interviewed believed someone would have died if they had not been armed. If true, that’s an average of one life saved due to firearm self-defense every 1.3 minutes.
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In nearly 75% of the cases, the victim did not know his attackers. In nearly 50% of the cases, he faced at least two attackers and in nearly 25% of the cases, there were three or more attackers. A quarter of the incidents of self-defense occurred away from the home. (2)
An opposing view criminologist Marvin Wolfgang even had this to say about Gary Kleck’s study:
“What troubles me is the article by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz. The reason I am troubled is that they have provided an almost clear-cut case of methodologically sound research in support of something I have theoretically opposed for years, namely, the use of a gun in defense against a criminal perpetrator…I do not like their conclusions that having a gun can be useful, but I cannot fault their methodology.”(3)
I have added the link to Dr. Gary Kleck’s Summary titled, “Guns and Violence, a summary field”, as well as a link to his book. I believe that Dr. Kleck’s summary and ability in the field says it all, much more accurate and substantiated than I could ever write and let his work stand on its on. I hope you find the chance to read his book titled, ‘Point Blank:Guns and Violence In America’, and look at the information in the link which is full of statistics and wonderful summaries on the benefit of legal law-abiding citizens being able to arm and protect themselves. His study has been challenged a few times and even then he has been able to academically defend his study.
I pray that 2013 leaves us, Americans, with our second amendment rights as originally written. I do know now is the time for not a call to arms, but to arm our voices and petitions to bear the right to arms!
In this video interview by Alex Holzbach, Dr. Kleck speaks of how the pro-gun control advocates can twist data and present it in their favor and why banning guns on campus is wrong.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck
2. http://civilliberty.about.com/od/profiles/a/Gary-Kleck-Biography.htm
3. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/26/AR2008062600615.html
4. http://www.amazon.com/Point-Blank-Guns-Violence-America/dp/020230762X
