Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor ruled in January 2009 that states do not have to obey the Second Amendment’s commandment that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
In Maloney v. Cuomo, Sotomayor signed an opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that said the Second Amendment does not protect individuals from having their right to keep and bear arms restricted by state governments.
The opinion said that the Second Amendment only restricted the federal government from infringing on an individual's right to keep and bear arms. As justification for this position, the opinion cited the 1886 Supreme Court case of Presser v. Illinois.
“It is settled law, however, that the Second Amendment applies only to limitations the federal government seeks to impose on this right,” said the opinion. Quoting Presser, the court said, “it is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the national government, and not upon that of the state.”
I wonder how we are to know which of the rights in the Constitution states are supposed to follow. Maybe New York can block the freedom of the conservative press. Florida can arrest any dissenters for daring to petition their grievances to Tallahassee. Utah makes the Mormon church of the state and will not any other churches to exist within its borders.
Let's not even start with the 13th-15th amendments. If those amendments didn't apply to local governments, slavery and segregation could possibly make a comeback.
What makes the 2nd amendment different from the other amendments other that Sotomayor and other liberals don't like it? Her decision flies in the face of the Supreme Court case just a few months earlier that said that DC must recognize the 2nd amendment.
She seems to believe that states can pick and choose which amendments they like to uphold and ignore the rest. This is a dangerous position for a Supreme Court judge to hold.
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