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Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

I do wish we had an organization protecting the 4th & 5th amendments that was as aggressive and successful as the NRA is at protecting the 2nd.

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Because its hard to fight against the general public's view that the police should do anything in their power to fight violence and drug dealers. Who cares if "criminals" rights to unreasonable searches is violated? They're "criminals"

Watch any cop show. The "rogue" cop goes after the violent criminal despite being suspended from the force and valiantly captures the mob boss. Public generally finds it okay as long as the bad guy gets caught (nevermind if the bad guy is just some non-criminal average joe)

PS I have nothing against cops in general, but the cops should be protecting _all_ citizens, especially against things like this.

> NRA is at protecting the 2nd

NRA refused to argue cases on second amendment grounds until very recently. They strongly opposed taking Heller to court. Second amendment has been tremendously eroded. Heller was fought by a group of non-NRA affiliated lawyers.

NRA works through campaigning and lobbying. They aren't as good at second amendment litigation (although they've been successful in litigating against bad gun laws using other constitutional amendments as well as the state constitutions -- which usually have stronger provisions for the right to bear arms than the US constitution).

EFF and ACLU, on the other hand, work through litigation. They are not nearly as well funded. NRA is not just a political organization, they are also effectively a AAA for firearm owners: they provide safety training (they're famous for having coined the "3 rules of gun safety"), sell targets, provide discounts on everything from wine to hotels, etc...

As much as it hurts for me to say, most people don't care about civil liberties. They want civil liberties for them: they want to carry a gun, they want to be able choose when to have or not to have a child, etc... Yet when it comes to more core liberties -- and despite being a strong 2A supporter and a gun owner, I think 1A and 4A are far more crucial than 2A today -- there's very little personal motive. People are very willing to give away their privacy to receive a discount at Safeway:

http://reason.com/blog/2010/02/23/judge-alex-kozinski-the-fo...

Is there a silver lining? Actually, yes! I think the rise of Internet will make privacy a more paramount concern that everyone will take to heart. Consider, for example this email subject from ACLU (about CISSPA) that I received and that literally (and likely deliberately and by design) made me quickly jump out of my seat:

  68359   + Mar 06 Anthony D. Rome ( 270) Your last Amazon.com order

In short, people who are _not_ civil libertarians (unlike myself, who is an ACLU and EFF member -- along with a donor to NRA-ILA and SAF) need a personal stake in core civil liberties in order to care about them. Fortunately, the Internet will give them just that stake.

ACLU, EFF to name a couple.

And the 2nd has been eroded tremendously, maybe not as much as 4th, but plenty still.

The ACLU and EFF are no where near as effective as the NRA. The NRA has a recent win in front of the Supreme Court that secured the 2nd on a state level, the EFF doesn't seem to do well in front of the Supreme Court. The ACLU protects part of the 1st and not much more.

By recent win, are you talking about McDonald v. Chicago? That's actually Alan Gura and the Second Amendment Foundation. They're also responsible for Heller v. DC, which the NRA tried to interfere with. In fact, most of the recent 2nd amendment successes have been Gura's work, not the NRA's.

The NRA is pro-hunting instead of being pro-second-amendment. Sometimes the two interests intersect, but not always.

SAF (guns) and MAPS+LEAP (drugs) are my favorite 501c3s.

That's probably because freedom of speech and freedom from unlawful search are perceived as rights that can wax and wane, but can always be restored.

The loss of the right to bare arms is perceived as an end-game. Once disarmed, there's no going back.

The same can be said about any policy -- verification is very easy with the 2nd Amendment because it's clear and obvious to consumers on a personal level however censorship and surveillance are difficult to measure and quantify.

I agree. That's why I carefully used the word "perceived."

"The loss of the right to bare arms"- I really hope they don't ban t-shirts!

Haha. Forgive my spelling.

The NRA only protects hunter's rights (sometimes at the expense of non-hunting gun owners). The most recent victories in the supreme court were by the Second Amendment Foundation, and think-tanks like the Cato institute have done much more for the second amendment than the NRA.

While the last decade or so has been good for supporter of gun rights, the entire 20th century was not. A lot of what gun rights activists are trying to do now is gain back some of the rights they lost in the 20th century.

As a side note, I think it is interesting is that 3D printer and other consumer-level CAD technology may be for the Second Amendment what the internet was for the First: a way to bypass government regulations altogether.

Please do not mistake my post for an endorsement of pro- or anti-gun viewpoints, I just want to clarify that the NRA isn't actually all that great for gun rights, and gun rights activists haven't been all that successful until recently.

The NRA has played a pretty big roll in passing "shall issue" concealed carry laws in most US states. I think saying they only focus on hunter's right is inaccurate, although the NRA does spend a lot of time on that as well.

In all fairness, all the other Bill of Rights amendments were already applied to the states.

The ACLU pretty regularly takes 4th and 5th Amendment cases.

Yep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Ri... the second amendment was incorporated in 2010, but most of the others were incorporated decades ago. By that data, if anything, the NRA is protecting the second amendment worse than all the other amendments have been protected.

I'm pretty sure they were waiting until the Supreme Court composition favored them before bringing a case. Heller was a 5-4 decision, filing when the court was more left/liberal could have had resulted in a devastating judicial precedent for gun owners.

The NRA has the advantage that it is aligned with the interests of a major domestic industry and everyone who works in it. The ACLU and EFF don't really have that kind of alignment, which one would assume makes it harder to raise funds, etc.

I think part of the issue is that the 4th and 5th generally are seen as protecting "bad" people who have already hurt "good people" and make it harder for other "good" people to do their jobs.

Guns are pretty benign when they're just sitting there, and there are plenty of existing laws to criminalize bad things done with guns. The arguments for restricting the 2nd are mainly about preventing bad people from acquiring guns from good people, which is only an indirect thing.

So, even an organization as effective as NRA/SAF/GOA would have a hard time being as effective in protecting the 4th/5th as they have been in protecting the 2nd.

(of course, IANAL, and I assume someone like rayiner will say something much more intelligent here)

Unfortunately, there are not many companies that make a living from the 4th & 5th. The gun companies stand to lose a good bit on 2nd amendment issues so they help fund the NRA.

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