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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

Go through each of the Bill of Rights, and for each produce a scenario where that right would be used by a criminal to protect him or her from planning, executing, and avoiding detection of a crime.

All individual rights are carved out from the default government, which is the one that takes absolute authority over all within its domain. North Korea is closest to this ideal today, but most vanilla monarchies were like this in the west.

Law enforcement officers (and politicians) must confront the simple fact that they must accept the restraints that the law places on them, even if it means letting the bad guy get away with it. Getting the bad guy at any cost ("Tango and Cash" style) makes a fun movie but it undermines the freedoms that our ancestors (by both blood and principal) fought and died for.

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Yup and these days I would say that individuals need to go the extra step by using technologies to ensure their rights are never violated. Simply having the right written into law is not good enough anymore.

Amendment 3 is pretty tough.

Googled it so you don't have to:

"The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution places restrictions on the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the owner's consent, forbidding the practice in peacetime."

How well defined is 'peacetime'?

There's groups out there I'm sure that could make the justification that something like 'the war on drugs' or 'the war on belly fat' means we're not at peacetime.

I think this is the first case the Supreme Court heard: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engblom_v._Carey

Because of the lack of any prior Third Amendment jurisprudence, this decision established three important holdings not previously articulated: (1) that the National Guardsmen qualify as soldiers under the Third Amendment; (2) that the Third Amendment applies to state as well as federal authorities, i.e., is incorporated against the states; and (3), that the protection of the Third Amendment extends beyond home owners, that is, those only with a fee simple arrangement, but includes anyone who, within their residence, has a legal expectation of privacy and a legal right to exclude others from entry into the premises.[1] The majority held that the correctional officers' occupancy in the rooms was covered under the legal rules of "tenancy" and was therefore protected under the Third Amendment.

Basically, the state kicked striking prison guards out of their employee benefit housing for national guard troops to use while the national guard was used for overseeing the prison.

Nixon started “the war on drugs”, and it looks like they didn’t try to use that as a defense.

That appears to address the 'occupation' part but not the 'at war' part.

Is that settled? Just because they didn't use it in the past doesn't mean they won't try in the future.

Things are going on right now in Washington that are completely unprecedented up to this point.

What caselaw defines 'at war' as it pertains to the third?

It's necessary! E.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-uighur-monitor-home-sh...

> All individual rights are carved out from the default government

Not sure this is how you meant it. If you mean to say that rights come from governments that is not quite correct, at least not in the US.

Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT (upper case is for emphasis only). In other words, these rights don't require government in order to exist. We are recognized to have them and government can't do a thing about it other than to respect and protect them.

This is a massive difference with other systems that lots of people, both inside and outside the US are not aware of.

Take the right to bare arms as an example. In most other nations, if it exists, this is a right granted by government to the people. In the US this is a right recognized by the constitution to exist despite and outside of government.

Here's the key difference between "grant" and "recognize": The government can't take away that which it does not own, did not and cannot grant.

An example of a right (well, a privilege) government can take away is your driver's license. They grant it and they can take it away.

In the case of firearms, the US government does not have the ability to confiscate weapons because that is not a right the government granted and, therefore, they don't have unilateral power to cancel that right with a simple bill. In fact, it takes a tremendously complex agreement across all States and the federal government to make any changes to the US Constitution (2/3 majority in the Senate, House and all 50 State Legislatures). Even that does not guarantee government to have the right to eliminate rights.

This is good. This means, among other things, that the government can't take your freedom of speech away because they do not own it, they did not grant it. It is recognized as a fundamental right. All rights in the Bill of Rights are equal in this sense (as far as I know). If we weaken one of them (as many want to do with firearms) you run the risk of opening Pandora's box and exposing the people to government control of rights.

It's an interesting problem.

Coming from this perspective it is hard to understand why people in any nation would want to live in an environment where the government owns and grants rights --and can take them away at will. If the idea is that government works for us --they are our representatives-- why in the world would it make sense that they would be able to take away our rights? Imperfect analogy: It's like a project manager hiring a worker and then having that worker fire the project manager.

PS.: A lot of anti-gun activists keep pointing at places like New Zealand and their gun confiscation and buy-back programs. The typical cry is "We should do the same". Well, we can't. Government did not grant, nor does it own that right. And it can't take it away. In many ways this kind of activism is nothing less than futile and even nonsensical. It's almost like demanding that we change the gravitational constant in that it is about as likely.

> > All individual rights are carved out from the default government

> Not sure this is how you meant it. If you mean to say that rights come from governments that is not quite correct, at least not in the US.

> Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT (upper case is for emphasis only). In other words, these rights don't require government in order to exist. We are recognized to have them and government can't do a thing about it other than to respect and protect them.

> This is a massive difference with other systems that lots of people, both inside and outside the US are not aware of.

> Take the right to bare arms as an example. In most other nations, if it exists, this is a right granted by government to the people. In the US this is a right recognized by the constitution to exist despite and outside of government.

> Here's the key difference between "grant" and "recognize": The government can't take away that which it does not own, did not and cannot grant.

> An example of a right (well, a privilege) government can take away is your driver's license. They grant it and they can take it away.

> In the case of firearms, the US government does not have the ability to confiscate weapons because that is not a right the government granted and, therefore, they don't have unilateral power to cancel that right with a simple bill. In fact, it takes a tremendously complex agreement across all States and the federal government to make any changes to the US Constitution (2/3 majority in the Senate, House and all 50 State Legislatures). Even that does not guarantee government to have the right to eliminate rights.

This argument is a prime example against the point you are trying to make. With guns, the government is constantly eroding that right by narrowing the scope of what constitutes a legally permissible gun. Wicard vs Filburn is another example of government rewriting the limits of their power without the consent of the people. Why did prohibition require an amendment but drugs are scheduled today without the necessity for constitutional amendments?

All organizations seek to expand their influence and power over time.

Prohibition didn't require an amendment, except insofar as the people pushing for it wanted to make it hard to overturn.

State and local governments had outlawed alcohol since the founding. If outlawing alcohol were somehow special, that wouldn't have been possible.

"State and local governments had outlawed alcohol since the founding."

That's because the scope of state power is very wide in the Constitution. The federal government is much more constrained (or was intended to be), and outlawing alcohol with an act of Congress would be a violation of the 10th Amendment.

Interestingly, even the 1st Amendment did not originally prevent states from infringing on the freedom of speech. It begins "Congress shall make no law...". Later the 14th Amendment changed that through "incorporation", which is a process I don't fully understand.

> The federal government is much more constrained (or was intended to be), and outlawing alcohol with an act of Congress would be a violation of the 10th Amendment.

Commerce clause, among others. There are all kinds of federal regulations and bans that have been upheld as constitutional. Claiming that they aren't really is wishful, not legal, thinking.

> Interestingly, even the 1st Amendment did not originally prevent states from infringing on the freedom of speech

This isn't correct. It's the due process clause that is operative, and the supreme Court has ruled that states can't remove rights, including those technically protected only from the federal gov, without due process.

They said “originally”, i.e. before the 14th Amendment, which contains the due process clause.

Edit: There’s also a “due process” clause in the Fifth Amendment, but it’s not the one used for incorporation (although it’s been used for so-called “reverse incorporation”).

> All organizations seek to expand their influence and power over time

This is true.

IANAL, but my guess is that a lot of this mucking around with firearms regulations is because people have not said "enough!" and taken it all the way up to the US Supreme Court (except for a few cases I am aware of).

In other words, can California (or any State) really prohibit magazines with more than 10 rounds? Can they really prohibit any kind of carry (concealed or not)? Where exactly is it that they --the government-- acquired the right to do such things.

Again, let's get away from firearms and talk about free speech. This is a stupid example, but, let's say that CA passes a law that makes it illegal to say more than 5 expletives in one minute. Do they have the right and power to pass such a law? No, they don't. They don't have the power to restrict speech AT ALL, because this is a right that is recognized --NOT GRANTED-- in the US constitution. Government does not own it and cannot take it away.

Many would then say: Well, you can't yell "fire" in a theater.

Sure you can! Try it! Well, don't, you'll get in trouble for it. Freedom of speech does not mean you are free from the consequences of what you choose to say. That's another common misconception. You can say whatever you want. And you can enjoy the full consequences of what you said.

The same is true of firearms. You can shoot them anywhere you want. And you can enjoy the consequences of your actions just as well. Just like you can drive your car into a tree if you want to.

This is one of those topics that has been completely twisted and contorted by zealots. In the US it is very simple: Our rights do not come from government. Period. Which means they can't take them away. When they do overstep their bounds we have to go to the courts to put them back in their place. That happens from time to time when people have enough.

I'll give you an example of just how ridiculous things can get. Here in California you basically can't protect yourself in any way. You can't conceal-carry a firearm (like in a purse or holster). You can't have a knife larger than something like a Swiss army knife. You can't have nunchuks, a pipe, a wooden staff, a baseball bat, a chain, nothing. You cannot legally go for a walk with some kind of a self-defense weapon other than a really mean dog or perhaps some pepper spray (2.5 ounces or less). In other words, I can't have two pieces of wood tied together with a rope.

If you think about the concept of a truly free human being on this planet and then contemplate the idea of that person not being able to defend themselves against criminals, well, it's truly surreal.

Like I said, IANAL, and I am not pro or anti firearm at all. I am neutral in this regard. I am looking at the Bill of Rights as a whole, not at any particular right. They are all co-equal and even interconnected. I just think some of the things we are seeing at State levels only exist because enough people haven't had enough and there hasn't been a "mother of all challenges" at the Supreme Court level.

I mean, what's the use of having a Bill of Rights in the US Constitution if any schmuck at the State level can defecate all of these rights at will?

> In other words, can California (or any State) really prohibit magazines with more than 10 rounds? Can they really prohibit any kind of carry (concealed or not)? Where exactly is it that they --the government-- acquired the right to do such things.

The tenth amendment?

The 2nd Amendment specifically refers to "the people", therefore the power to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms is "prohibited by it [the Constitution] to the States", and therefore the right to keep and bear arms is reserved to the people.

Even Antonin Scalia's opinion in Heller allowed that gun regulation was not entirely forbidden by the 2nd amendment. Exactly how much is allowed was left pretty unclear.

But insofar as some is allowed, the ability of the States to do it is specified in the 10th.

...and to the extent that a law does violate the 2nd Amendment, it is forbidden for the states to enforce such a law (and the 10th Amendment doesn't change that).

I don't see the relevance of the 10th Amendment to this particular discussion.

EDIT: I see. The person to whom you replied seemed to be looking for the power somewhere, and you are just saying that the states powers are not enumerated (as the federal powers are).

> The tenth amendment?

IANSL, but I don’t think so. That would mean states could regulate anything in the Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech. That makes no sense to me at all because it would effectively make the BofR optional.

The 10th Amendment says that the powers not forbidden to the states, or granted to the Feds, are left to the States, or the people.

Insofar as the 2nd amendment permits gun regulation (the exact contours have not yet been established by the courts), that power is still in the hands of the states.

State regulations on public carry are not a new idea: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/forum/firearm-regionalism-and...

Yeah, I don't know. This starts getting into the deep technical details of law, history, precedent, etc. I have a feeling that, once you reach these depths, only people with the requisite legal training and knowledge can voice opinion with any degree of authority.

I suspect these are matters still waiting for the "Mother of all Supreme Court Cases". I wish we would take a solid year of time and have the SCOTUS, once and for all, look at this intricate puzzle and lend clarity to a very messy set of situations. Any outcome would be better than the legal limbo in which exist on this matter.

I would much prefer a society without guns BTW. That said, I am not diluted enough to think this is even remotely in the real of the plausible. That's why I prefer to push back against wasting energy trying to go for bans, confiscations and buy-backs that will never happen.

We need to go after the criminal or disturbed minds that seek to cause harm, regardless of the means through which they might accomplish this --from box cutters, through pressure cookers and, yes, guns.

I firmly believe this is an attainable goal. Far more attainable than clashing with the second amendment. This goal isn't without issues. For example, there are privacy laws that, quite literally, prevent a doctor from reporting someone who they believe might cause harm to others.

Nothing is simple. Some things are simpler than others. That does not mean they are easy.

> That's another common misconception. You can say whatever you want. And you can enjoy the full consequences of what you said.

if the government can make these rules and bring these consequences, then what exactly is free about this "free" speech?

north koreans are free to say whatever they want, too, and enjoy the full consequences of what they say.

the only difference is what kind of speech can bring what severity of consequences.

The difference should be obvious:

In the one case, if your speech causes harm to others (i.e.: you incite a crowd to attack me) the consequences of your actions lead to legal repercussions.

In the other case all you have to do is look at the supreme ruler the wrong way and you are dead.

This is precisely my case: Our laws come from us, not them, not government.

I fail to understand the distinction in a way that would be generally applicable though.

I lack the cultural context for US but in many other cultures, expressing a valid rational position can be actively harmful to one.

At what point something becomes harassment? Can you give me more details?

Suppose I am actively promoting eating beef in public space near a very religious vegan settlement. Is that speech protected or not?

It is targetting people based on their belief but the whole spectrum of who it is not clear at all unless one intends to assume malice and fill in the gaps. All I would be doing is to promote eating beef because it's good and healthy.

Does placing restrictions on where you can talk violates your free speech despite it being public property? Say, a restraining order or something similar.

> Suppose I am actively promoting eating beef in public space near a very religious vegan settlement. Is that speech protected or not?

In the US, yes, absolutely, it is.

As long as you don't become violent or enter their private property you can say anything you want. You can stand there every day of the week for an entire year with a sign that says something like "religious vegans are criminals" and you are absolutely protected by the US Constitution. The police might come and talk to you to make sure you are not a threat (do you a gun illegally?) but as long as all you are doing is exercising your recognize right to free speech you can do that all day long.

You are only going to be the subject of a restraining order if you are a threat. No judge would grant a restraining order against someone peacefully exercising their first amendment right. If they did, if for some reason the group you are protesting lied and they got a restraining order they would be exposed to pretty serious legal consequences.

I don't particularly enjoy these videos, yet they are an example of how serious these rights are in the US. Some on this thread dismiss them as "just words on a piece of paper". Well, in this case those words made five people with guns walk away from someone they were not legally allowed to harass:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJTOrkWUACI

Do this in most countries in the world and you'll find yourself in front of a judge with broken arms, a busted face and possibly almost dead...if you even get to the judge.

> The typical cry is "We should do the same". Well, we can't. Government did not grant, nor does it own that right.

No, we can do that. The government can merely assume the power, as governments so often do.

Paper is not a defense. A "Bill of Rights" containing only a single right would be of zero value.

What is a defense is the bundling of recognized rights, as in the Bill of Rights. It's like an alliance: an assault on any one right is an assault on them all. If a large majority of people would rally behind a single right (maybe freedom of speech?), then the right is not seriously in danger (for now). The rights which are in danger need to be bundled so that the whims of a particular time and place do not permanently sacrifice a right.

When a particular right is borderline unpopular -- perhaps the right to keep and bear arms -- that provides a lever to pry away all of our rights, and we must prevent that. When you look at the wave of gun laws being proposed and passed, you'll see how obvious it is that they are an assault on the entire Bill of Rights (for instance "red flag" laws are a clear violation of due process).

The Gun Safety movement is a rerun of the Drug War. A bunch of reasonable-sounding people concerned about their community used as pawns to push a very different agenda. In the case of the Drug War, it was violating the 4th, 5th, 9th and 10th Amendments to oppress political enemies (hippies and blacks). In the case of the Gun Safety movement, it's violating the 1st, 2nd, and 5th Amendments to oppress political enemies (rural/Christian/whatever).

The reason we end up with ridiculous laws -- like harsher punishments for crack than powder; or laws restricting foldable stocks on rifles[1] -- is because those laws are not ridiculous when you understand the real agenda.

[1] If the goal is to reduce murders, then rifles are an absurd place to start. Knives are a much more common murder weapon. So are "Hands, fists, feet, etc.". Even in Texas, where there are few rifle laws. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

No argument there. I never understood the obsession with AR-15's when their contribution to crime, over, say, the last 20 years, is basically a rounding error. The only answer is: politics taking advantage of emotion for political gains.

The best example of just how stupid the whole "assault ban gun" idea is found in Chicago, where the weekly carnage has not relented in years and the weapon of choice is nearly 100% handguns.

The problem politician have with these issues is that they can't actually get behind the reality of the problems because reality goes against their political power and invalidates all of their vote-gathering tools. If the fear-mongering about "assault rifles" was honestly matched to crime data in the public square they would, at a minimum, look like fools and if portrayed honestly, as liars and manipulators.

We humans are really funny species. Imagine what we could do if we could bring more reason, common sense and honesty into our affairs.

AR-15's?

They don't look like your grand father's deer rifle or duck hunting shot gun and instead look like a military weapon, e.g., the Russian AK-47.

With the usual technical and US legal description, the AR-15 is just a "semi-automatic rifle". But due to looks, they get called "assault weapons" like the fully automatic AK-47.

Sooo, some people get headlines talking about "assault rifles".

Yes I agree. To focus on the AR-15 is peculiar. All semi-automatics should be banned.

Given that rifles are involved in such a small number of murders, why go to all the effort of including rifles in the ban? Seems like a big logistical challenge and you'd make a lot of your fellow citizens unhappy.

If your proposal is to ban all semi-auto pistols (including from police) but allow all semi-auto rifles (without allowing state/local restrictions), you might get some traction. Such a plan would be better supported by numbers, better supported by the Constitution (which is talking about militia weapons), and more politically palatable (nobody will say "over my dead body" because they have to change their little gun for a big gun).

I'm not naive enough to think any ban would be easy, but the logistics aren't insurmountable. There has been a ban on assault weapons before. Eventually, there must be legislation to reduce access to military-style assault rifles such as those used in mass shootings.

Why must there be? We are talking about small numbers of deaths and a large number of people who want (and/or currently own) rifles.

Sometimes you just need to be practical and look at the numbers. Just because you don't want a rifle doesn't mean a ban has zero cost or that the cost is somehow not a valid one. Many of our fellow citizens want the freedom to own rifles and you should have some respect for that.

The better case for gun control in every possible way is pistols. But nobody will ever budge on pistols if they sense that it's just a "first step" to confiscating rifles as well. The only way to get any kind of gun control is to earn trust by showing respect for ordinary citizens owning rifles, and from that point of respect you can make reasonable suggestions on pistols.

I am not advocating a blanket ban on all guns. Rifles, sure. For hunting, sport, farming etc. But semi-automatic AR-15s have no place in a civil society. Preventing access to them seems like a sensible compromise, and it has been demonstrated to be effective in other countries. My friend's son had active-shooter training at school. He is six. That is an unacceptable situation.

> All semi-automatics should be banned

My guess is this would not pass the constitutional test.

Without being an attorney, I would think the question would be one of an interpretation of the second amendment in the context of the argument. That's where I am having trouble. What is the argument being made in the context of restricting a right?

I know the intent or idea: If you can't fire at a rapid rate you can't hurt as many people per unit time. I get it. And this might be a solid argument. Yet I can see it having lots of holes when applied.

An obvious one has to do with whether or not we can restrict criminals. The answer is obviously "no". This is where a lot of these things fall apart.

If you can guarantee a society without weapons then everyone is comfortable not having any. Introduce asymmetry and the arms race begins.

The other argument is one about unfairly punishing law-abiding citizens.

I have presented this hypothetical in many conversations and nobody ever answers the question. It goes something like this:

Suppose I have you a couple of handguns and assault rifles, all the ammunition you want and trained you in their use at a high level of proficiency.

How long would it be until you take those weapons and shoot a bunch of innocent people?

How long would it be if I threaten to harm your loved ones unless you do it?

How long if I abduct a member of your family and threaten to harm them unless you do it?

If the answers to these questions are "never", how is restricting access to any hardware make us safer?

It does not.

This is a software problem. Brains. Not hardware. If it were a matter of hardware you'd eventually become a mass murderer simply because I gave you firearms and trained you. Not the case. Which means focusing on the hardware is the wrong path.

This is also the wrong path for a very different reason. Again, suppose I gave you all those guns, ammo and training. And 30 years later you haven't harmed anyone and never intend to. And then someone knocks on your door and says: You are a potential criminal because you own guns and therefore I am going to take some of your rights away. Anyone faced with such an accusation would think it is crazy, unfair, unjustified and plain wrong.

Focusing on the hardware is seen by gun owners as that very scenario. They are being told they are criminals. They know they are not and never will be. This strikes a deep nerve that has nothing to do with firearms. It's like telling someone they are criminals just because they own a ski mask. Honest people don't like to be characterized that way. And, as a result, they will defend their right to not be deemed guilty for doing nothing.

That's how the conversation stops and we never fix a thing.

If everyone got on the same boat and we talked about dealing with the real root causes of violence and crime everyone would join in. Call half the country "criminals" and you get nowhere.

> If you can guarantee a society without weapons then everyone is comfortable not having any. Introduce asymmetry and the arms race begins.

I haven't seen any evidence of an arms race in Australia or NZ, for example.

> This is a software problem. Brains. Not hardware.

So it's the "guns don't kill people, people kill people" argument performed in staccato with additional tedious rhetoric. Could it be that no one has satisfactorily answered your hypothetical questions because despite you obviously thinking that you've cornered someone with your brilliant socratic method, that you've actually just thrown up a few straw men that are not worth delving into?

> I haven't seen any evidence of an arms race in Australia or NZ, for example.

Their laws prevent it. That's the problem with these comparisons. You have to compare apples to apples. I'm sure they have pretty good gun control in North Korea. There's an app for that.

> Could it be that no one has satisfactorily answered your hypothetical questions because despite you obviously thinking that you've cornered someone with your brilliant socratic method, that you've actually just thrown up a few straw men that are not worth delving into?

No. People don't answer the question because the only honest answer exposes the fallacy in their thinking.

It's very simple, if guns cause violence then giving anyone a gun should turn them into criminals. However, the only way that can happen if for the person to make that decision. The weapon is not the root cause at all.

What is also interesting is that every anti-gun proponent I have presented with this scenario immediately resorts to personal attacks, insults, mischaracterization and more, anything except any approximation of an honest answer.

If you can't turn someone into a killer by handing them a gun, then, what makes a killer? Well, to begin with, not the gun. Maybe magical pixie dust?

I have over thirty years of work in all kinds of technology fields, from the motion picture industry to aerospace, small projects to billion dollar programs. I have yet to see anyone --ANYONE-- solve any problem by IGNORING root causes and focusing on the demonstrably irrelevant. That's the problem with this issue. It has become so polarized and political that nobody, on either side of the argument, wants to address root causes. Because, to borrow the term, these are inconvenient truths.

This is equivalent to: "I have a flat tire. OK, let's change the engine!"

Here's a tip: Insulting me or my argument does not fix the problem, does not save lives and does nothing towards fixing the real problem. If you are a US citizen and are truly interested in saving lives, stop pushing fantasies and get behind going after true root cause analysis. That's the ONLY way we make things better.

I guess I have to ask: What do your root cause analysis of the problem?

> Their laws prevent it. That's the problem with these comparisons. You have to compare apples to apples.

Oh, OK. Different then. Had better move on.

> I'm sure they have pretty good gun control in North Korea. There's an app for that.

But this glib comparison with North Korea makes a lot more sense.

> No. People don't answer the question because the only honest answer exposes the fallacy in their thinking.

Well, firstly, the questions just aren't very good. It would be like if I had asked

"Do you not believe children should go to school free from the fear of a mass shooting?"

"Do you think believe people have a right to feel safe?"

But I wouldn't be asking them in good faith.

> This is equivalent to: "I have a flat tire. OK, let's change the engine!"

No it isn't. It's generally considered one of many things governments around the world can do to reduce gun violence.

Problems have multiple causes and solutions.

More guns, more homicide.

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms-research/guns-an...

> No argument there. I never understood the obsession with AR-15's when their contribution to crime, over, say, the last 20 years, is basically a rounding error. The only answer is: politics taking advantage of emotion for political gains.

And that it has been the weapon of choice for school shooters.

Rather than just repeat a political line, can you please go deeper? Areas where you cpuld potentially add to the discussion:

* What are the numbers behind the statement?

* What policy proposals do you favor and how do you expect them to influence these numbers over what timeframe? What do you expect the side effects to be?

* Help put policies and numbers in context. Which policies are useful and which are not?

> And that it has been the weapon of choice for school shooters.

You know, if it is that difficult to take the time to run a few google searches before saying something it might be best to not say it at all. You are demonstrably wrong.

I don't understand why people don't take the time to ensure they are working with facts rather than parroting things they heard, or worse, believing things they imagine.

Here, I'll help you a little:

http://memepoliceman.com/which-kind-of-gun-is-used-most-in-s...

https://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-r-0057.htm

https://www.statista.com/statistics/476409/mass-shootings-in...

https://www.thetrace.org/rounds/mass-shooting-gun-type-data/

All these shootings are horrible. Yet they have nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with the software, the brains.

The proof of this statement is ridiculously simple:

Let's say I gave you a couple of handguns, an AR-15 and as much ammunition and training as necessary to make you a highly capable marksman.

After that, how long would it be for you to go out and kill a bunch of people at a mall, on the street or at a school?

Never?

The problem isn't the hardware, is it?

> The rights which are in danger need to be bundled so that the whims of a particular time and place do not permanently sacrifice a right.

If the people who wrote the constitution had such a good grasp of what the correct fundamental rights were, why did they allow slavery to happen? Why did they only allow land-owning white males to vote? If they were not morally infallible, and we accept that their opinions on those issues were justifiably superceded by future generations, then why are we not allowed to critically examine the rights enumerated in the constitution and question which of them are no longer tenable today, instead of a priori dismissing any possible challenge to the constitution as a stupid "whim of a particular time and place".

My argument was that, if you want to keep a right protected from government, bundling it into a list (like the Bill of Rights) is a good approach.

I never said that the Bill of Rights covers all possible rights or that the founders were infallible.

Your question about slavery is misguided. The founders were forming a union out of pre-existing states. It was not the founders' intent to interfere with states much at all. Only certain parts of the Constitution prohibit powers to the states, and before the 14th Amendment, the states were not as tightly bound even by the Bill of Rights (e.g. the 1st Amendment starts "Congress shall pass no law...").

The idea that you can form a union of 13 colonies and also make demands of them at the same time goes against the whole idea of the Constitution. The Constitution is a framework, and it only protects rights that were already widely regarded as rights before the union (for instance, the right to bear arms wasn't just made up for the Constitution, similar things existed in many state constitutions already).

The Constituion is amazing not because it was perfect from day one. It is amazing because it expressly limited the power of the government that it was creating (the federal government), and because it turned out to be a surprisingly resilient framework. The Bill of Rights is amazing because it got a surprising number of things right.

Going back to the original article, the 1st and 4th Amendments are still radical after 200+ years.

We can re-examine the 1st, 2nd, 4th, or whatever Amendment you want. But they seem like a good list to me, and once one is lost it is unlikely to be regained peacefully (because losing a right grants power to the government, amd governments don't like to give up power). Majority opinions do fluctuate a lot and if a simple majority could give up the rights of everyone, the entire Bill of Rights would be long gone.

Murder rates have declined dramatically since the founding and still seem to be declining or steady. So I don't want to give up the 2nd Amendment just because we have more media noise about guns, nor the 1st/4th Amendment because police have a harder time decrypting messages now. I find it weird to call rights "untenable" when everything is getting better, not worse. Like, what exactly is the big problem with freedom that it was somehow "tenable" before but now it's not?

I think it's unfortunate to leap from the right to privacy to the right bear arms. These are both good topics for debate and I actually support gun rights but they are different, large questions and this leap is effectively a thread derail.

They are more intertwined than you think.

What is gun control but the government asserting a right to pierce your privacy to the putative end of arms control?

People don't look at it that way because people are used to looking at X and calling it X, Y and calling it Y, but not realizing both X and Y are subtypes of Z, so chipping away at X is chipping away at Z, even if you want to swear up and down the street it's only -X and not -Z. It is -Z and it is -X. Period.

It's why I've begun to fear the legislator that is seemingly able to break the law by making laws they are not empowered to make, and a politicalized judiciary that doesn't spend their time enforcing a strict obeyance of legislation to common language, and administrative lawmakers in the executive that are never double checked.

The world passed on to the generations after us will be a grim place indeed if we keep leaving them more and more shackled by the overwhelming detritus of the legislative hooliganry of our age.

You and I have a natural right to self-defense, I don't know that you or I have a natural right to firearms.

I'm a firearms owner and I love to hunt but I am not sure that people have a natural right to firearms, and from observation many people should not possess them due to personal negligence surrounding the awesome responsibilities attendant with firearms usage/mis-usage.

100% agree with this.

Although responsibility is important, firearms aren't an "awesome" responsibility. Millions of kids use firearms safely; some quite young. It's in the same ballpark as other ordinary responsibilities like driving, maintaining a swimming pool, using power tools, etc. As far as recreational activities, those involving guns aren't particularly dangerous (statistically).

There are something like 400M civilian-owned guns in the U.S. If it were an awesome responsibility, then we'd all be dead by now. But murder rates are low and either steady or declining.

It's easy to say that other people seem irresponsible, but we need to look at the data. Firearm accidents resulting in death are very rare.

On the other hand, some types of cryptography are classified as weapons by the US government.

But I do favor a 1st amendment view of "right to cryptography" rather than a 2nd amendment view of it.

Are they? I thought they were just subject to the same export rules for convenience - the ones for weapons were reusable to achieve the wanted goal.

According to Wikipedia some cryptography is on a "munitions list". I'm not very familiar with the law though, so I guess I don't know if that really means it's classified as a weapon.

He clearly said 'bare arms' which is all about t-shirts and the rolling-up of sleeves, not citizens buying military assault weapons.

Imagine a bakery puts out a sign that says "the bread you can buy here was not baked by a bakery, it was only recognized to be bread". Does that mean that the bread that comes out of their oven that they earlier stuck dough into was indeed not baked by them?

How does the fact that a piece of paper says something make what it says a fact? It is obviously nonsense that rights could exist without a structure to enforce them. Whether you call it "recognized" or "granted" is completely irrelevant, the fact of the matter is: If the government decides to act as if the right did not exist, then the right does not exist, and governments in general are very well capable of acting as if rights did not exist, and the fact that some piece of paper says "recognize" does not inherently change that, governments in general are also very well capable of ignoring pieces of paper.

The only thing that protects rights is sufficiently many people acting to protect them.

No, it isn’t, in a country of laws these things have weight and meaning. If, on the other hand, we are talking about complete anarchy and the end of laws as our guiding principles then, yes, sure, in that case words on paper do not matter. Until then...

That is exactly the point: These things have weight and meaning as a consequence of there being a country of laws that recognizes them. Without a political entity to recognize or enforce them, they are just words. They're not some inherent property of people or nature, but concepts created through law and enforcement of law.

As such how they are worded is no protection - only peoples willingness to resist changes is actual protection against rights being eroded.

I think what's missing from this conversation is the mindset. In the United States, those words on paper are are respected by government and the people demand this to be the case. The culture is such that these things are not optional. Your right to free speech being a simple example.

If don't live in a country that behaves this way it is likely very difficult to understand how this could be.

I lived in Argentina during the time of military rule. I knew that any negative interaction with police could have terrible consequences for me. Even death. Sure, there were laws in place that were supposed to protect me and others, but that didn't stop anyone from committing atrocities because the culture did not honor laws as is the case in the US. I remember being detained with a group of friends coming out of a movie. We where put-up against a wall, spread legs and arms, frisked, interrogated, harassed, laughed-at and held for over an hour. Once the cops were done having their fun they threw all of our ID's on the ground and let us go.

It took me YEARS after coming to the US to not have my blood pressure rise when interacting with cops. I mean, even having a cop car behind me was stressful. After a while you understand that things here are different. When we say "this is a nation of laws" it isn't something that goes on a bumper sticker, it has real meaning. I have a lot of cop friends and even trained at an Aikido dojo for years that was nearly 90% law enforcement. Context is important and the context is culture and laws.

If you want to argue about what would happen if the US government went off the rails and decided to do as they wished against the population. Well, I am sure there's a good movie in there somewhere. Until then, it's just silly.

> I think what's missing from this conversation is the mindset.

That was exactly my point. Hence why I wrote:

> only peoples willingness to resist changes is actual protection against rights being eroded.

> No, it isn’t, in a country of laws these things have weight and meaning.

What is your point? Even if noone cares about what that piece of paper says, it still has "weight and meaning"? Or are you just repeating what I said using slightly different words, i.e., in a country where people care about what that piece of paper says, what that piece of paper says has weight and meaning?

> If, on the other hand, we are talking about complete anarchy and the end of laws as our guiding principles then, yes, sure, in that case words on paper do not matter. Until then...

So ... a dictatorship is complete anarchy then? Or are you saying that it is inherently impossible for a government to selectively ignore individual laws or sections of the law? Or is it just yet another rephrasing of what I said, i.e., only if sufficiently many people act to recognize, demand, and enforce the rights, will there be rights?

I don't really understand what you are trying to say.

In the US the Bill of Rights is taken very seriously by everyone, from citizens to the heights of government. That's just the way it is.

Forgive me, I just don't know what you are trying to communicate.

The point is that your original statement that these rights don't require government in order to exist ist just false. These rights require that they are taken seriously by everyone, from citizens to the heights of government in order to exist in any meaningful sense. It may well be that having them written down in such a clear form as the Bill of Rights helps in forming that consensus, but in the end, the consensus is what determines whether those rights exist or not, not whether these rights are written down or which exact words were used.

And the further point is that there are plenty of people working to undermine those rights, and they don't need to change those words to be successful, they can also change how they are interpreted and how seriously they are taken in order to achieve their goal of undermining those rights, and that is what they usually do.

The very concept of a civilized society requires everyone to living by the laws and rules that society agreed to as their guiding principles. When you live in the US the Constitution, perhaps, the most important of these rules.

If we are going to talk about government derailing and doing as they wish then no piece of paper can protect anyone. At that point it becomes about guns and blood. Which sort of drives the point of the second amendment. That scenario is very, very far from reality in the US for more reasons than one.

The US is one of the few (well, I don't think I know of any other) where you can tell a police officer to go to hell and stop harassing you in a public space due to the rights recognized by the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution. YouTube is FULL of videos showing these kinds of situations. Anywhere else on earth you are far more likely to end-up in jail or worse.

That happens because, at the end of the day, this society is based on a legal set of rules that everyone tends to follow, particularly the important ones. That's the difference.

I know someone is going to bring up the topic of cops doing bad things. Guess what? There are bad cops, bad engineers, bad dentists and bad ice skaters. Humans are not a uniform blob of meat with the same brain. When someone behaves badly, more often than not, they face the consequences of their behavior. This includes violating others' rights.

I know that if you are not in the US the above can be incomprehensible. And that's OK, there's nothing I can say to make you see this realty. It's like a bird trying to explain to a fish what it is like to fly. The lack of context is too extreme.

How does any of that make your original statement true?

Also:

> If we are going to talk about government derailing and doing as they wish then no piece of paper can protect anyone. At that point it becomes about guns and blood.

No, it doesn't, if there is sufficient consensus for authoritarianism. I mean, except for the few people who don't agree, maybe.

> That scenario is very, very far from reality in the US for more reasons than one.

That seems very naive to me if you look at all the efforts to undermine those rights, including by the president himself.

> The US is one of the few (well, I don't think I know of any other) where you can tell a police officer to go to hell and stop harassing you in a public space due to the rights recognized by the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution.

Then ... you are badly informed?

> That happens because, at the end of the day, this society is based on a legal set of rules that everyone tends to follow, particularly the important ones. That's the difference.

So ... you are agreeing then that it's about the consensus, not about the piece of paper?

> I know someone is going to bring up the topic of cops doing bad things. Guess what? There are bad cops, bad engineers, bad dentists and bad ice skaters. Humans are not a uniform blob of meat with the same brain. When someone behaves badly, more often than not, they face the consequences of their behavior. This includes violating others' rights.

And also, more often than not, they don't. But more importantly, you are making the argument against your original claim yourself here. What matters is the consensus, not the piece of paper. What matters is whether consequences are enforced on those who violate rights, not whether some piece of paper says "recognize" or "grant". What matters is whether society at large and government in particular consider those rights important or not, not whether some piece of paper says "recognize" or "grant".

> I know that if you are not in the US the above can be incomprehensible. And that's OK, there's nothing I can say to make you see this realty. It's like a bird trying to explain to a fish what it is like to fly. The lack of context is too extreme.

Erm ... yeah, sure! I gather that it is perfectly comprehensible to you what it is like to live anywhere else, though, right?

I have lived and I am from three different cultures. I have lived and experienced military dictatorships, utterly corrupt Latin American fake democracies and, yes, life in the US. I have traveled and done work in many countries around the world. I am not an expert, but, yeah, I am not an "ignorant American" as many like to paint anyone from the US.

You still don't understand the key difference and I am not sure I can explain it well enough for you to internalize it.

That piece of paper and the words on it mean a lot.

They drive a massive legal system that takes that piece of paper and the words on it very seriously.

And so, if a bad politician, from the President on down to a local city official, a law enforcement person or any inhabitant of the US for that matter, behaves in a way that violates those words, the legal system makes them pay the consequences of their actions.

This does not mean that we are 100% infalible in this regard. Nobody is. There will be bad politicians, cops and people from time to time who will get away with misbehaving. That's just reality.

However, in the US, for the most part, these laws are respected AND enforced. They mean something and, in particular, the Bill of Rights exists outside of government. They can't take away your freedom of speech or engage in unreasonable search and seizure, etc. without suffering devastating legal consequences.

The only way this would not be so is if society as we know it in the US derailed to the point of anarchy. That is very far from reality. Impossible? Nothing is. Highly improbable? Absolutely. This isn't Venezuela. Yet.

And yet all it takes is a terrorist attack to change all that.

I think OP didn’t mean to discuss the philosophical difference between grant and recognize though. Just that for each individual right, recognized or granted, we take a step away from totalitarianism on the spectrum of political freedom.

This is semantically vacuous verbiage. Rights have no meaning unless you have a system of human organization (e.g. a government) that allows those rights to be enforced and respected. In the absence of such an arrangement the phrase "I have the right to do X" has as much meaning and validity as Chomsky's "colorless green ideas sleep furiously". It's not a wrong statement, it's just a completely semantically empty one.

>> Rights, in the US, are not GRANTED by government, they are RECOGNIZED by the US Constitution to exist OUTSIDE OF GOVERNMENT

> This is semantically vacuous verbiage. Rights have no meaning unless you have a system of human organization (e.g. a government) that allows those rights to be enforced and respected.

The OP is clearly being sloppy with their word usage (and their all-caps usage), but I think what they may be trying to say is that the constitution generally prohibits the government from doing something, rather than granting an individual the right to do it.

For example, the first amendment doesn't say you have an affirmative right to free speech, just that "Congress shall make no law .. abridging the freedom of speech". Most constitutional "rights" are actually rules prohibiting the government from doing something (e.g., prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures).

On a practical level, the distinction may seem semantic, but there are important moral implications: all people inherently born free, and government/society restricts that freedom. Some of those restrictions are more acceptable than others, and that's what the constitution tries to delineate. If it was the reverse (i.e., the government granted you rights), then it would imply you were not free to do them in the first place.

Although the two approaches are similar on a practical level, the former approach emphasizes freedom to a greater degree.

> all people inherently born free

All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature.

> All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature.

Well humans don't live in traditional Darwinian nature, our brains have evolved beyond that. A key distinction between humans and animals is our ability to think and imagine. Freedom, at it's root, is based on the idea that people have an inherent right to "think" and believe.

If "thought" is an intrinsic right, then it follows that freedom to think should be protected. It further follows that to protect thought, we need to protect speech, religion, certain aspects of privacy (i.e., you can't freely think if you're constantly being watched). A whole moral code can be built from the basic concept of the right to think.

> All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature.

Sure there is! You are not prevented from grabbing a stick and defending yourself by some artifice. You might lose. Or win. And you are free to make that choice.

In CA if someone comes at me with a baseball bat and I have two sticks tied together with a short piece of rope to defend myself I can end-up in jail. I once asked a police officer friend (LAPD Commander, actually) what I could legally carry in Los Angeles to defend myself and not get into trouble. He said "your best pair of running shoes".

The whole thing is preposterous. What ends-up happening is that lots of people secretly conceal-carry because they don't want to be victims. They do the math and conclude they rather go to jail than be dead. Truly sad.

> > All people are born vulnerable to being beaten up and coerced by the guy with the biggest club. There is no "inherent" freedom in nature.

> Sure there is! You are not prevented from grabbing a stick and defending yourself by some artifice. You might lose. Or win. And you are free to make that choice.

> In CA if someone comes at me with a baseball bat and I have two sticks tied together with a short piece of rope to defend myself I can end-up in jail. I once asked a police officer friend (LAPD Commander, actually) what I could legally carry in Los Angeles to defend myself and not get into trouble. He said "your best pair of running shoes".

This is actually very sound advice and what you get told in every reasonable self-defense class. Carrying a weapon around is really more about satisfying some sense of self importance/illusion ("I could heroically defend myself, if I get attacked") than actual self defense. I remember doing that when I was 16 and feeling very tough, I've grown out of it.

> The whole thing is preposterous. What ends-up happening is that lots of people secretly conceal-carry because they don't want to be victims. They do the math and conclude they rather go to jail than be dead. Truly sad.

Your perspective on this is truly twisted. Talk to crime victims and see how many speak about a sense of self importance or some illusion of heroism.

I was attacked by a thief with a knife when I was in my 20’s. This shit is real. Don’t generalize it to ascribe some kind of a Hollywood fantasy/caricature and intent.

If you are robbed by someone with a weapon, escalating the confrontation by pulling a gun out dramatically increases your chance of getting hurt. It doesn’t make you safer.

Stop using movie scenes as the basis for your ideas of how the universe works. Do you really see two people, face-to-face, pulling out guns to see who gets shot first? C'mon! This is laughable.

By your logic, you are also “free” in an oppressive state like North Korea since you have the option of defying and rebelling against the government. You might win or lose, but you are “free to make that choice”.

Every human is born free. Even in North Korea.

Not every society allows it's members to be free.

This is excessively pedantic bordering on bad faith

> Take the right to bear arms as an example. In most other nations, if it exists, this is a right granted by government to the people. In the US this is a right recognized by the constitution to exist despite and outside of government.

In the US, the “right to bear arms” is a right to own a weapon as part of a “well-regulated militia”, with the idea that the nation was not originally intended to have a standing army, because it was believed that standing armies were a threat to the security of a “free State”.

It goes directly along with the third amendment against the quartering of soldiers in private houses.

A maximalist personal right to carry weapons everywhere all the time was invented post facto by gun manufacturers and pro-gun activists in the recent past. Notice that the same pro-gun activists are uninterested in the “well regulated” part, and are generally military enthusiasts uncritical of the most expensive and lethal standing army in the history of the world.

Well, you are wrong. That is, unless you are a constitutional scholar with powers the supersede those of the US Supreme Court.

In "Heller" (2008), as the case is generally known, the US Supreme Court explored the history of the Second Amendment and established that it creates an INDIVIDUAL right not linked to a militia or army. This was confirmed once again by the US Supreme Court in another case in 2010.

There's a popular meme that involves cutting-up pieces of the Second Amendment to pull out, as you did, "right to bear arms" and "well-regulated militia" and then, Bob's your uncle, you can't have a gun. Everyone is a constitutional scholar. Well, that's not how it works.

While IANAL, I understand that these things are the result of a process of legal challenges and a lot of historical context. This question of the individual right is now very well established with, as far as I can tell, just a few corner cases. Thankfully laws are not interpreted by random people behind keyboards at random locations on the internet. They are the result of years of legal process, challenges and interpretation. The law, as it stands today, says you are wrong.

In other words, it is pretty much nonsensical to keep trying to contort the language and claim something exactly opposite what the US Supreme Court concluded in more than one recent review of the matter.

Here's a good article on the matter from Cornell Law School:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment

I have a lot of friends who are very passionate and well informed about this stuff. I've learned quite a bit over the years through conversations with them. For the most part what I have learned is that most people don't know what they are talking about when it comes to the US Constitution, the legal system, how government works and even what their rights actually mean.

It's a failure of, at a minimum, our educational system and, at the modern extremes, our inability to prevent the dissemination of false information. That's how you get ideas such as the "assault weapons ban" when any objective observer can easily --within 15 minutes or less-- of looking at the data, conclude that's as dumb as clipping your toe nails to cure cancer.

Solutions are only found if we explore reality, not fantasy.

In other words, nation-wide gun bans and confiscations are not the realm of reality. Therefore, it is pointless to go on and on about this nonsense. If we want to truly have an effect on gun violence we need to stop focusing on fantasy and face reality, which includes bad guys with guns and mentally disturbed guys with guns. The vast majority, the overwhelming majority of firearm owners would never hurt anyone. They are not the problem.

Heller was a 5:4 decision made against text, history, and precedent by radical judicial activists. The decision doesn’t stand up to historical or logical scrutiny, and it was accompanied by a very forceful dissent. Justice Scalia’s claim to being guided by “originalism” and “textualism” was shown to be a hypocritical farce by this and similar rulings.

Ah, OK, so any 5-4 SCOTUS decision is not valid then? How do we decide laws then? Can I ignore the ones I don’t like? And how about McDonald in 2010.

See, that’s the problem with gun haters, their solution is to mess with the rights of everyone. Let’s go! Let’s take that approach to everything. No more cars, knives, hammers, medicine, planes, trains, rocks, pressure cookers, chains, pieces of wood, ropes, etc. Let’s ban everything that could ever be used to harm anyone. For that matter, let’s castrate all men to prevent rape too.

At some point reason needs to prevail. The problem has nothing to do with the hardware and everything to do with the brain. This is so irrefutable it’s silly.

You're conflating SCOTUS role as an arbiter of law vs. whether or not their decision is factually correct. A 5-4 decision is binding, but no decision is automatically factually correct just because SCOTUS made it, whether it is unanimous or 5-4.

> You're conflating SCOTUS role as an arbiter of law

Well, that's what they do!

How else do we decide then? Do I get to drive 150 miles per hour because I don't think the speed limit laws are factually correct? After all, I am quite capable, I have spent thousands of dollars learning and practicing race car driving and if I am on an absolutely empty road...

You can't pick and choose what laws you should obey. We are talking about rights here. The Bill of Rights for that matter. This isn't about where you should cross the street.

This is silly.

Look, the laws are what they are.

If you don't like them, go put your case in front of the SCOTUS and argue your point.

The comment above was not talking about what the laws are, but about fact. That the laws are what they are does not change facts. If SCOTUS rules tomorrow that the sun orbits the earth, that does not make it fact.

You're doing the exact same thing again of conflating an argument about fact with an argument about law.

To paraphrase George Carlin here: Google Japanese Americans in WW2 and then tell us again that you have rights the government can't take away.

What is the takeaway here? The government has done a lot of terrible things against its own people, especially when it thinks it’s making decisions “for the greater good”

If anything that’s more of an argument for constitutional gun ownership than against it.

The takeaway is that rights, recognized or granted, are feeble concepts in the face of a frightened public.

George Washington's example of the Whiskey Rebellion is a good example too: the government was founded on these wonderfully articulated principles, but it was first and foremost a government and the survival of that came before the principles.

It is unfortunate that Americans always propagate the story that the US system is still special, but I guess the thought is part of the self-image ("we are the greatest country in the world") . It's not 1788 anymore. Yes at the time the US constitution was special, but the world moved on and many countries took inspiration from the US constitution. Generally human rights (as for example defined by the UN declaration of human rights) are considered universal or natural rights and are enshrined like that in the laws and regulations of many countries.

That said, that does not mean we (or governments) do not regulate the rights, take your example of right to bear arms, you are not allowed to bear nuclear arms, or rocket launchers, so there is regulation.

I think you are misinterpreting what I said. This is about a difference in law and not about being special in any way.

Also, don’t fall into generalizations of “Americans” and the whole “greatest country in the world” meme. This isn’t Star Trek, where all Klingons are a uniform cultural and behavioral monoblock.

Don't often hear folks from the US complain about being stereotyped.

Fair enough though, so long as it's applied consistently.

My opinion of this is that it has to come from movies and perhaps that portion of our mass media that is seen outside of the US.

I remember watching CNN in my hotel room in Munich the first time I traveled to Europe a few decades back. I was absolutely horrified. Seriously. I used to watch CNN almost exclusively here in the US. In case someone wants to come back with a Fox News comment, know that at the time FNN did not even exist (it came on air in 1996).

My first thought after watching CNN in my room in Europe was: Our enemies could not pay for better negative coverage of the US. I mean, it was horrible. Brutally negative. And very different from the CNN programming we were exposed to in the US. It made me realize why so many people had negative views of the US. Not the sole reason, of course, but this was quite shocking.

The other thing you have to realize in terms of the US is that this is far from a mono-cultural population, very far. There's tremendous cultural variety from coast to coast and north to south. And even within each region, cultures vary. I mean, just speaking of myself, while a US citizen, I come from both Latin American and Middle Eastern cultural backgrounds. By that I mean that I speak multiple languages, grew up in multiple cultures and feel at home in any of them.

And so, stereotyping Americans is, well, at the end of the day, fairly ignorant. I don't mean that as an insult but rather as a factual statement. Anyone who lumps "Americans" (as in the entire US population) under one category, culture or school of thought simply does not know what they are talking about.

Since we are talking about this, the term "American" sounds offensive (and ignorant) to a lot of people. How dare they call themselves "American"! That's a continent, not a country!

Well the name of the country is United States of America. In the case of Italy you can call yourself "Italian", France, "French", etc. What are you supposed to do with "United States of America"? Call yourself "United States-ian?". That's how you come to "American". This used to bother me until I understood where it came from and it made total sense.

BTW, there are other countries who do this kind of thing:

Mexico's official name is "Estados Unidos Mexicanos" or "United States of Mexico".

Brazil's official name is "República Federativa do Brasil" or "Federal Republic of Brazil"

In English we call them "Mexican" and "Brazilian" for short, just like people from the USA are called "American".

Thank you for your detailed reply, and I'm totally on board with how "American" is basically a meaningless term that means nothing except for, roughly, the citizenship status of an individual.

> And so, stereotyping Americans is, well, at the end of the day, fairly ignorant.

Any stereotyping is ignorant, and I'm sure you'd agree with that. Muslim, Christian, Catholic, Eastern European, Italian, Indian, Syrian, Computer Nerd, Musician, Redhead, Hipster, Bogan, Redneck, Boomer. No single word can encapsulate anything but one immediate descriptor of any individual.

This appears to be something that's been lost, and is only moving further away, in political discourse around the world, pandering to fear of stereotyped groups. And politicians only use it because it works. Sadly.

Yup. Outrage and emotion coupled with ignorance seems to be the modern formula to get votes. Add to that the weaponization of social media and we have awesome election-winning technology.

I think he did mean that they are of-and-from as in taken away/given away freely while they previously were an integral part of previous mostly tyrannical power hierarchies.

The psychoanalytical “father” is both good, and tyrannical, and i think part if its wisdom in that it manifests today as government and written ideal (where the ideal has power to reign in the government) is testament to our wisdom as a society.

This distinction is mostly philosophical and historical in as much as it forms part of how these issues are framed. No person except perhaps a few strange fanatical monarchists goes around in the UK and thinks of themselves as subjects of the queen rather than citizens, for example. The framing of where rights comes from can affect debate, but in and of itself it says very little about to what extent you can expect erosion of rights.

The issue is how many roadblocks you have managed to embed into the public consciousness, not what the law says - laws, even constitutions, can be changed, and regularly are, or tends to be possible to circumvent in all kinds of ways.

The framing can make it politically harder, but only as long as the idea of the importance of a right remains embedded in the public view of the society they live in enough to make changing the law hard. I don't think whether the letter of the law suggest rights are granted vs. recognized matters all that much in practice with respect to that.

I think it's good to encourage people to see rights as inherent rather than granted, but I have no illusions that that means they can't still be taken away.

> This distinction is mostly philosophical and historical

Not in a court of law, where it matters. We can be dismissive, but this distinction has true and legal significance. As I mentioned in one of my notes, this is the reason the government of New Zealand can decide to confiscate weapons while, in the US, it is so close to impossible that it is.

> laws, even constitutions, can be changed, and regularly are

Laws and the US Constitution are two different things.

The US Constitution can be changed, yes, but it virtually impossible. This is particularly true of REMOVING rights in the Bill of Rights.

In order to make any change you need --by law, as spelled out in the constitution:

    2/3 majority vote in the US Senate.
    AND
    2/3 majority vote in the US House of Representatives.
    AND
    3/4 of State Legislatures approve it (via direct vote or ratifying convention).

The other way is:

    2/3 of State Legislatures ask the US Congress (House and Senate) to hold a constitutional convention.
    AND
    3/4 of State Legislatures approve it (via direct vote or ratifying convention).

In other words, it is just-about impossible, particularly given today's political climate.

There's a practical element to this. Proponents of enhanced gun control (or gun confiscation) are wasting a ton of time, energy and money in an exercise in futility. It would be far more productive to focus on addressing the real causes of gun violence than to try and remove constitutional rights from people who have never and will never harm anyone.

> Not in a court of law, where it matters.

Pretty much the entire thrust of what I wrote was about the legislative process, which makes what happens in a court irrelevant, as they are confined to interpret it.

> The US Constitution can be changed, yes, but it virtually impossible. This is particularly true of REMOVING rights in the Bill of Rights.

The US constitution has been changed on a regular basis. To me the number of substantial changes shows that it is not "virtually impossible", but of course you're free to have an interpretation of "virtually impossible" that is different from mine.

How does stopping to recognize a right differ from stopping to grant a right in practice?

> bare arms

= no shirt (or just a singlet?)

Bear arms = wander around with weapons. (Alternatively, have [black|brown|polar|panda] bears for your upper limbs/arms?)

I love English.

The right to own taxidermied bear arms.

> Not sure this is how you meant it. If you mean to say that rights come from governments that is not quite correct, at least not in the US.

I think the point he was making is that the default government is an ethical state of absolute tyranny: all of your natural rights are subservient to the state. In this sense, the rights are carved out of the government, even if they are natural rights.

Yeah, but if you read closely their speeches, they're trying to paint this as if we shouldn't benefit from "warrantproof encryption" or be able to "resist a warrant".

Leaving the technical details aside such as the fact that it's not possible to have a "secure backdoor" that won't ultimately be used by the (other) "bad guys", this is important because they make it seem as if this is the only way they'd ever use this power -- with a warrant.

And THAT is beyond FALSE and a BIG FAT LIE, and they know it. Watch Bush's speech about the Patriot Act when he signed it. He said the bill will be used to "read the terrorists' emails" and other digital communications. Now we know that in 97-99% of the cases, the Patriot Act is used for crimes other than terrorism, usually drug related. But the FBI also absolutely loves to abuse the National Security Letters for at least half of their data requests to big data companies. And the best part is those come with gag orders so the public will almost never find out about those requests.

Worse yet, since these were past, these powers were further expanded, usually days before Christmas, so now the FBI gets access to RAW internet data just like only the NSA did previously. So does DEA, and about 15 other agencies. No warrant needed, for just about any crime they'd like to investigate.

And you can bet this is their plan with the encryption backdoors, too. I guarantee it. They'll continue to talk in public about warrants and how they will only use it with a warrant, and then somehow the bill will be written to include all sorts of ways for them to access the encrypted data WITHOUT a warrant.

Even when the criticism against a surveillance bill is very strong, they still somehow end-up "compromising" by only getting warrantless access in "emergency situations" (where emergency isn't defined too specifically) or for "serious crimes" (often not well defined in the bill either). Or they manage to sneak a serious crimes "and other type of crimes" in there, too, as they've done in some bills in the past.

So let's not be naive with the whole "warrantproof" talking point. They're trying to distract and mislead us. Ultimately, even if the bill is very specific about a warrant, they just know they can expand it later after one or two renewals, as they've done with FISA 702 to now give other federal agencies much of the same data access NSA gets, even though that wasn't supposed to be the original plan at all.

In fairness, I think we want a panopticon. We just want to intentionally blind it when it comes to us; however, if there is evidence of a crime, I'm okay with accessing normally forbidden parts of the panopticon to find the wrong-doer. But yeah, they reach for too much power almost reflexively. IMHO every time law enforcement asks for more power, the people should be reflexively skeptical, even derisive. Tell me, are local police so bad at their job that they need these superpowers? This level of surveillance is akin to a WMD. They just don't need it and shouldn't get it, and should get punished (e.g. fired) for asking for it.

>All individual rights are carved out from the default government...North Korea is closest to this ideal today..

America is not even close to North Korea in relation to human rights and freedoms, and I feel no source is required as this is just hyperbole.

Edit add words.

You've misunderstood those sentences. The OP is saying that out of all the governments in the world, North Korea is the one that grants its citizens the least rights.

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