Hacker News Reader

Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com