Roy Moore once suggested getting rid of the 14th Amendment, which gave former slaves rights

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Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for the Senate in Alabama, has been under fire for allegations of sexual assault against underage girls, but he has also come under fire recently for audio showing him suggesting that the amendments after the Tenth should be scrapped.

“You know people don’t understand how some of these amendments have completely tried to wreck the form of government that our forefathers intended,” Moore said in June 2011 during an interview on the “Aroostook Watchmen” radio show.

“For example, the right to keep and bear arms, the First Amendment, freedom of press liberty. Those various freedoms and restrictions have been imposed on the states through the 14th Amendment. And yet the federal government is violating just about every one of them saying that — they don’t they don’t — are not restrained by them,” Moore said on the show, which is hosted by two conspiracy theorists.

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When Moore was asked his opinion on the Fourteenth Amendment, which gave former slaves rights under the Constitution, he seemed to suggest that it should be done away with.

“Yeah, it had very serious problems with its approval by the states,” Moore said. “The danger in the 14th Amendment, which was to restrict, it has been a restriction on the states using the first Ten Amendments by and through the 14th Amendment. To restrict the states from doing something that the federal government was restricted from doing and allowing the federal government to do something which the first Ten Amendments prevented them from doing. If you understand the incorporation doctrine used by the courts and what it meant. You’d understand what I’m talking about.”

A spokesperson for Moore tried to downplay the comments, claiming that the media was overreacting and saying, “Judge Moore has expressed concern, as many other conservatives have, that the historical trend since the ratification of the Bill of Rights has been for federal empowerment over state empowerment.”