There are eleven state constitutions that do not protect the right to keep and bear arms.
California, Delaware, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
North Dakota and West-by-God Virginia surprise me.
UPDATE: In comments, I've learned that the post I refer to is in error. West Virginia, Delaware and Wisconsin do have provisions in their state constitutions for keeping and bearing arms.
What about the other states?
California, You Nork and New Joisey, obviously, do not.
5 comments:
Technically, that's not true in Wisconsin.
From the Wisconsin State Constitution:
"Right to keep and bear arms. SECTION 25. [As created
Nov. 1998] The people have the right to keep and bear arms for
security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful pur-
pose. [1995 J.R. 27, 1997 J.R. 21, vote November 1998]"
The problem is the Wisconsin State Supreme court has rendered it meaningless by refusing to enforce it.
It took me less than five minutes to find this in the WV Constitution:
West Virginia: A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and state, and for lawful hunting and recreational use. Art. III, § 22 (enacted 1986).
[Self-defense right explicitly protected.]
Thanks!
Yeah, that makes this guy wrong on WI, WV, and DE so far..... did he do any research at all?
The post is also misleading because there is Second Amendment related protection in Maryland's Bill of Rights.
Maryland still has its original Second Amendment related language as part of its Bill of Rights. It refers to a well regulated militia, and that provision is the lead clause in a typical Mason Triad originally from the Founding Era. Mason Triads have leading Second Amendment related language recognizing a defensively effective armed populace, followed by a statement that a standing army is dangerous to liberty, with the final triad part indicating that the military ought to be under the control of the "civil power" (the armed populace recognized in the first part of the Mason Triad).
The modern dispute over the intent of the Second Amendment has left everyone with the impression that bill of rights "well regulated militia" phrases refer to the military when in fact they refer to the armed civil population that was establishing the bill of rights and constitution.
Mason Triads were found in every one of the original state bills of rights, of which there were eight. Half of those contained the well regulated militia language for the first clause, half indicated that the people have a right to bear arms for the first clause. That there were two different ways of describing an armed populace in these Mason Triads is the reason why the Second Amendment has two clauses, each one based on one of those two original forms.
It is going to take awhile for those in the legal community to discover and accept Mason Triads and the fact that both the well regulated militia references and right to bear arms references were state bill of rights protections for an armed populace. The Mason Triads and their clear relationship to the concept of civil control of the military was first presented in The Founders' View of the Rigth to Bear Arms, which was just published back in December. It is a relatively unknown history of the Second Amendment, even though it has been cited to the Supreme Court seventeen times in various briefs supporting our rights in the Heller case.
Several states, such as Virginia and Delaware, have replaced their original well regulated mililia language with right to bear arms language largely because the former was subject to complete misinterpretation by gun control advocates (just like the Second Amenmdment itself).
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