supreme court wrong: no individual right to a gun versus state

My opponent's basic argument is, if I may use a metaphor, I am an architect, I tell you to build a house and paint it blue, you paint it red. Because you are the painter, and you say it should be red, my statement that is should be blue, is irrelevant. I have been accused of ignoring the 'history of jurisprudence' more than once in this debate, and honestly I have glazed over, and outright ignored it. With good reason, I hate arguing opinions of a court that has so often made horribly wrong and immoral decisions, Dred Scott for example, but let us start with the oldest case on the books. United States V. Cruikshank [1876] "The Supreme Court decision held that these rights are not granted by the constitution and do not depend upon it for their existence. " That is that these rights pre-exist. " [23] and ""With regard to those acknowledged rights and privileges of the citizen, which form a part of his political inheritance derived from the mother country, and which were challenged and vindicated by centuries of stubborn resistance to arbitrary power, they belong to him as his birthright, and it is the duty of the particular state of which he is a citizen to protect and enforce them, and to do naught to deprive him of their full enjoyment. When any of these rights and privileges are secured in the constitution of the United States only by a declaration that the state or the United States shall not violate or abridge them, it is at once understood that they are not created or conferred by the constitution, but that the constitution only guaranties that they shall not be impaired by the state, or the United States, as the case may be." [23] So the first SCOTUS case ever, upholds an individual right to bear arms. Presser v. Illinois [1886] Holds that the militia clause can not be enforced upon people to keep them from arms. [24] Miller v. Texas [1894] Addresses the issue of the 14th Amendment applying to the 2nd Amendment. What about those cases for your jurisprudence requirement? The funny thing is I have often seen these cited, by both sides as anti-gun cases, but if you read the decisions, the only thing they say is that the right is not granted by the constitution, but pre-exists, and that the right is covered by the 14th. And we find that in the 1886 case, SCOTUS upheld that being in a militia is not a requirement as the right is an individual right. "if con thinks the 14th amendment is sufficient to give rights for guns, that too his just his opinion. that's all one can ask in whether an issue is a fundamental right, opinions. but it could just as easily be a right such as the right to privacy created via that amendment with no bearing on the bill of rights... it doesn't have to rely on the second amendment to be created as a right. and id argue it isn't relying on it cause the second amendment protects the state militias only. " You keep missing the point, none of the Bill of Rights gives, grants, or otherwise creates a right. What they did, is protect existing rights from federal tampering. After the 14th was passed, which forced the states to acquiesce to the rules that the feds had. Prior to the Civil War, each state was considered an independent nation, afterwards we were one singular nation. I ignored the history of jurisprudence in these cases as it wasn't necessary to make the point, a judge can be wrong, and often is. The history of the men who created the nation, and wrote the document, and their subsequent writings and arguments for the ratification of the Bill of Rights, is sufficient to show the intent. The 2nd Amendment is an individual right. However as you continue to argue case law from the 1900s I figured I might show you what courts closer to the event thought and saw. Rulings prior to the civil war are mostly invalid, as they followed a different set of rules, one for the states and one for the federal government, in the first three cases, the oldest I could find at SCOTUS, we find that the courts did uphold that the right is an individual right that pre-exists the constitution and is protected against federal tampering. Thank you for the debate, it was fun. Source 23 : http://www.constitution.org... Source 24 : http://caselaw.findlaw.com... Source 25 : https://supreme.justia.com...