Our opinion is, that any law, State or Federal, is repugnant to the Constitution, and void, which contravenes this right, originally belonging to our forefathers, trampled under foot by Charles I. and his two wicked sons and successors, reestablished by the revolution of 1688, conveyed to this land of liberty by the colonists, and finally incorporated conspicuously in our own Magna Charta!
But that so much of it, as contains a prohibition against bearing arms openly, is in conflict with the Constitution, and void; and that, as the defendant has been indicted and convicted for carrying a pistol, without charging that it was done in a concealed manner, under that portion of the statute which entirely forbids its use, the judgment of the court below must be reversed, and the proceeding quashed.
The Bliss court invalidated the law as a diminution of the Kentucky constitution which provided, "that the right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State, shall not be questioned."
The Reid court held that the law "to suppress the evil practice of carrying weapons secretly," did not violate the Alabama constitution.
[10] The Nunn court recognized that Reid and Bliss were applying clauses in state constitutions.
It is true, that these adjudications are all made on clauses in the State Constitutions; but these instruments confer no new rights on the people which did not belong to them before.
When, I would ask, did any legislative body in the Union have the right to deny to its citizens the privilege of keeping and bearing arms in defence of themselves and their country?
We do not believe that, because the people withheld this arbitrary power of disfranchisement from Congress, they ever intended to confer it on the local legislatures.
For example, the court explained that the right to peaceably assemble, protected under the First Amendment, was applicable to both the national and state governments.
1820) which applied Fifth Amendment double jeopardy prohibitions to New York state court operations.