Unfortunately, pretty much all of the BoR is regularly under attack. Those rights have to be constantly reaffirmed.
1st Amendment is being attacked by liberals, with pronoun laws, hate speech regulations, equal opportunity laws, forced cake baking, many other things.
The 2nd is also being attacked from a variety of ways by liberals, which as said before, is well intentioned, but ultimately destructive.
Thank goodness the 3rd isn't an issue!
The 4th amendment is being attacked by both conservatives and liberals in a variety of ways. From NSA data collections on Americans under Obama, to DEA/BATF sponsored civil asset forfeiture under Bush, and unlawful searches by ICE under the current administration, this Amendment is very important but is being chipped away by both authoritarian ideologies.
Ah, our 5th amendment has been weakened by both liberals and conservatives. From No Fly lists and travel bans you can't get out of, to waiting periods on firearms, we've truly let this very important amendment become weakened.
I like all of the amendments. I don't want to see any single one of them weakened any more and some of our rights restored.
Attacking the Bill of Rights isn't exclusive to one end of the political spectrum.
The left are trying to remove it with their various 'hate speech' laws (already done in many countries, say the 'wrong thing' on Facebook in the UK and you have the police coming to arrest you in hours) which can be applied to anything the left simply don't want you to say - and silencing you is fundamental to far left ideology.
Attacks on individual liberties are not limited to a particular political ideology.
Anyone trying to make laws allowing those things would be attacking the first.
http://theweek.com/speedreads/695695/reince-priebus-admits-t...
I'm not an NRA member, but the idea of repealing the 2nd Amendment, or worse, interpreting it out of existence has bothered me in ways I couldn't quite put my finger on. I finally realized what it was. If we decide one of the rights is "archaic", "obsolete", "insane", or any of the epithets routinely leveled at it, we set a terrible precedent. How long will it be before the rest fall when they are inevitably inconvenient?
We need to stand for all the BoR. Not whatever is convenient.
There are also consistency issues, the prohibition was an amendment, what made that thing negociable?
Other fundamental rules are completely inconsistent like being 21 to drink while the majority is 18.
But it does cover other weapons. You can own as my knives as you want. The exact text is "the right to keep and bear arms". Firearms isn't specified.
>prohibition was an amendment, what made that thing negociable?
It wasn't negotiable. There was another amendment to repeal it.
>Other fundamental rules are completely inconsistent like being 21 to drink while the majority is 18.
While true this is inconsistent, it isn't actually in the constitution. In theory states can set drinking and majority age as high and low as they want.
Something something bringing a knife to a gun fight...
The amendment doesn't specify firearms; it just so happens that firearms are the most contentious weapons protected under it, for obvious reasons: firearms are among the most deadly weapons in common use, but hoplophilic citizens do not want to be denied access to weapons their enemies have access to. Nevertheless, there was a Second Amendment case brought to the Supremes (Caetano v. Massachusetts) about a woman's right to buy a stun gun, which was illegal in Massachusetts. The Supremes found in her favor.
As for why the Second is considered "special" -- it's part of the Bill of Rights. There's nothing stopping anybody from repealing it, but the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights are considered special in American legal tradition because the promise of their passage was essential to the ratification of the Constitution itself. So it would take much more effort to gather support for repeal of a Bill of Rights amendment than the Eighteenth Amendment (which was largely passed because of the temporary political vogue of the temperance movement).
But nowhere does he suggest that a constitutional amendment to repeal the 2nd would be a bad thing; he doesn't even touch on the amendment process at all.
(Also I don't get where he's saying that conservatives love the 1st and second, liberals love the 4th, 5th, and 6th, and they both hate what the other loves. I have a dim view of the 2nd but I'm pretty happy with the other 9. It's kinda ridiculous to suggest that liberal are against the 1st.)
I'm not talking about the 2nd being inconvenient. I'm talking about it being a mistake. Just like prohibition was. Just because we might collectively decide that giving people the right to arm themselves in ridiculous ways was a mistake, it doesn't follow that we're obviously going to decide that freedom of speech was a mistake, too. I'm absolutely not buying a slippery-slope argument here; that's just a fancy way of saying "I don't want positive change because I'm afraid of negative change as well".
The Bill of Rights is not some magical thing. Amendments are simply late additions to the Constitution. They are a part of the constitution. Suggesting that we shouldn't repeal an Amendment is suggesting that the Constitution's own amendment process should be tossed aside as invalid.
> We need to stand for all the BoR. Not whatever is convenient.
No, we don't. We need to stand for what makes sense for our society. "Convenience" has nothing to do with it.
Advocating for repeal of the 2nd seems to me to be advocating for civil war and literal decimation of the country.
Most of the people I know would complain and protest any confiscation, but I doubt they would shoot a law officer to protect that privilege. They would simply lose too much in return for that exchange.
Target a vulnerable sub-population and you just might be able to pull it off (mentally impaired, under 21, etc.)
And you can’t fight that war if you aren’t armed for it. So it’s a do or die / back up against the wall proposition at that point.
Men rise up in violence all the time to protect what is sacred to them. “Change one law” is I think not an accurate depiction of the premise I was responding to - which was repeal of the 2nd amendment and large scale gun confiscation.
That said, your point can certainly stand at a state level. I still think how the process is managed impacts the broader social response. An approach that attempted to leave bolt-action/small capacity shotguns and files in place may be received differently than a wholesale ban. An approach that only eliminated 'assault weapons' but left handguns would have a different impact than an approach that required both to be turned-in. There's lots of ways to drive a confiscation, with lesser or greater outcomes on how people resist, I would think.
Edit : after looking at the actual list of amendments, at least one was repelled after being introduced (regarding the Prohibition) so it seems they are not as immutable as I believed.
By all means, agitate for gun control. But in order to do so you need to successfully present a case for Second Amendment repeal. Anything less -- such as the collective-rights argument -- means that you've empowered the courts to interpret away the force of the Second Amendment. And once you've unleashed that beast, you won't be able to control it. The courts will interpret away the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments, and then we're in really deep shit.
There is an old Dr Dobbs article that mentions that the 3rd might be the key to keeping the government from installing mandatory software on our computers. A stretch, but don’t forget the intent of that amendment.
For a long time the US government classified cryptography as "munitions" subject to export regulations (though not all "munitions" are "arms") https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th...
I'm pretty sure that the United States government has not been forcing anyone to house soldiers.
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amen...
They've all been pwnt in one way or another.
(Having said that, it's arguable that the police were not asking to be "quartered", and in any case, the 3rd concerns soldiers, not police.)
The court dismissing the idea that there is a 3rd Amendment issue could exactly be what the parent was talking about, if he does indeed believe it was a 3rd Amendment issue.
It would be tautological to consider the Supreme Court's decision to be the final word on the truth of the matter - doing so would imply that it's impossible for the government to systematically violate any rights/laws.
I sure get distressed when otherwise intelligent and educated Americans sincerely tell me: "Sure I believe in free speech, but you can't let that guy say those things!" They'll throw it all away for some insignificant gain.
Counterpoint: propaganda is a thing, how do you get the benefits of robust (and I don’t mean loud or rude) debate to find the best policies without the risks of propaganda?
How do I know I have not fallen for propaganda myself when I argue for or against some policy?
Besides, propaganda vs truth is like porn vs art. It's impossible to define, and there's no human I'd trust to make such decisions (not even myself).
If the truth cannot be known, then we don’t have democracy, we have government by highest advertising budget.
There are likely some physics laws that can explain this better than I can, but the farther in time you get from a physical event, the more information is lost (entropy leaving your light cone). This leads to 'evidence' that allows multiple valid interpretations.
I want to be less wrong.