Considered by many to be the worst Supreme Court ruling in history, Dred Scott v. Sandford does have some value, especially when people say stupid things such as the individual-right interpretation of the Second Amendment only began with the District of Columbia v. Heller decision in 2008.
Dred Scott v. Sandford 60 U.S. 393 (1857) was not a Second Amendment case but the Second Amendment was peripherally involved in Chief Justice Roger Taney’s majority opinion.
“For if they were so received, and entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizens, it would exempt them from the operation of the special laws and from the police regulations which they considered to be necessary for their own safety. It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all of this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State.” (Paragraph 77)
Taney was a well-respected attorney who had served as Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of the Treasury and Attorney General. Prior to that, he was Maryland’s attorney general. As such, his view of the Second Amendment in 1856-57 is very instructive. Clearly, Taney and the six associate justices the joined in the majority opinion believed citizens had an individual right to possess and carry arms “wherever they went.”
Nadler is so far off-base, he isn’t in the same Zip Code.
By Bill Cawthorn
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