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Old February 20, 2013, 05:20 PM   #4
sholling
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 18, 1999
Location: Hemet (middle of nowhere) California
Posts: 4,261
It's just symbolic but keep in mind that there is a difference between saying "there should be a law" which is protected by the 1st Amendment and introducing legislation that infringes on civil rights. One is speech and the other is an activity. It's like the difference between a bigoted lunch counter owner saying "I don't want to serve black people" and actually refusing to serve black people. One is incredibly stupid and tasteless but constitutionally protected speech and the other is an illegal activity.

It's primarily a recognition that the 100 years of fighting Jim Crow laws and Black Codes that it took to go from the end the Civil War to African-Americans actually enjoying equal civil rights under the law is not an experience that we are willing to repeat over the next 100 years with our 2nd Amendment civil rights. That we will not accept another 100 years of politicians building an ever growing series of legislative fences around our 2nd Amendment civil rights and court rulings in our favor. On the other hand a better solution is inserting a strict liability clause in state constitutions that make politicians personally obligated to reimburse the state for the entire cost of defending any law that they voted for that is later found unconstitutional and for the legal costs of those that successfully challenge the law. That is the only way to make power mad politicians stop and consider the constitutionality of the bills they are voting for instead the current "spaghetti cook" method of throwing anything and everything they can think of at the wall and seeing what the courts allow to stick.
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