So if we expect the Gun Rights people to chill out, shouldn't the same be done for the 4th....?

The BBQ Pit
41

The argument that “2nd amendment [should] lovers to cut us some slack” is a stupid argument in the first place (and I am not sure I believe that anyone seriously makes it, at least in good faith). The argument should not be about “cutting slack” but about which principles are bad ones, inappropriate to our era, and ought to be discarded, and which remain good, relevant and important.

There is no hypocrisy at all involved in decrying the 2nd amendment and defending the 4th. On the other hand, if someone really believes (as opposed to being prepared to accept it as a very imperfect compromise) that the 2nd ought to be retained, but somehow sidestepped or bent, then they are already being, if not hypocritical, morally inconsistent, what ever their attitude to the 4th or other parts of the constitution might be.

42

It was relatively quiet before 9/11, and 9/11 itself killed off 19 terrorists, probably a not insignificant proportion of the would-be terrorists in the world at that time (and, very likely, the 19 most ruthless, determined, and competent ones). Terrorism also remains, as it always has, at relatively low levels in the rest of the world, not “protected” by US data mining. Outside of actual hot war (especially civil war) situations, terrorist attacks have always been very rare (and mostly not very destructive) events. Even long running terrorist campaigns like the IRA or the Palestinian campaign against Israel, never actually killed or injured all that many people, nothing remotely approaching what happens in a real war. Most people, outside the context of being involved in actual hot warfare, are not dumb enough to believe terrorism will do whatever causes they believe in any good (and even most of the few who are dumb enough, either have enough moral qualms or insufficient courage to actually act on their belief).

“Getting” OBL had very little to do with protecting anybody. If anything, it probably made the world slightly more dangerous that it otherwise would have been. Bin Laden was a spent force whose assassination probably turned him into an inspirational martyr for a certain constituency. His killing was an act of revenge or (if regarded very charitably) justice. As your final words bear witness, it was much more about making Americans feel better than about actually making them safer.

I also think it is very unlikely - though of course I can’t know for sure - that finding him owed anything to the sort of data mining that is in question here, particularly any that breaks or bends the 4th amendment, which, after all, has no application outside the USA.

43

There was some guy on this board (I can’t remember who) that said something to the effect of “If a few people have to die so I can keep my guns, that’s fine with me.”

This was said directly after the Sandy Hook shootings. This guy got ripped to shit by the other Dopers on this board. (And rightly so)

How is it any different to say “Terrorist aren’t killing that many people. It’s fine if a few people have to die. As long as the Government doesn’t know I called my Grandma last Saturday at precisely 3:05 in the afternoon, I’m good.” ??

44

It isn’t any different. Far too many people don’t accept the reality that ALL of our Constitutional amendments cost lives. Freedom and safety are opposite ends of a spectrum: the trick is to find the right balance point between the two.

45

I am a big proponent of both the 2nd and 4th amendments and, frankly, it seems odd to me that it seems so many people have vastly different views on the amendments. But even as a proponent of the 2nd amendment, I can appreciate that there are reasonable restrictions such that regular citizens don’t need to own bazookas, though I’m not sold on a lot of other, particularly recent, restrictions, that’s not really relevant here.

By the same token, there ought to be some reasonable restrictions on privacy, but like a lot of the restrictions with guns, there are some that I think most people would agree with, and there are plenty that are questionable about whether they violate the intention of the amendment, or even whether they make sense. For instance, just because information is publically available, doesn’t mean that it’s a good use of government resources to collect and sift through it.

I’m also of the opinion that concepts about privacy don’t directly translate to the internet. For instance, when I’m at the grocery store, everything I say and do is publically visible, all the products I buy are viewable by everyone there. But if I then go on to shop at other stores and perform other errands, I’m unlikely to see the same person at each place and, even though they’re all public places, I’d be creeped out if someone followed me. This is the sort of line that online surveilance crosses, because there’s the potential to not just monitor what online retailers I use, all the message boards I visit, all my Facebook posts, all my youtube videos, all of which are public to semi-public, but they also get my instant messages, emails, specific purchases, banking transactions, and other things that are intended to be of a personal nature. Sure, there’s realistically not the actual level of privacy that we really would hope, but I still think it’s reasonable to expect that it ought to be.

So, by that, if the government wants to monitor my Dope posts, see what I publically post on Facebook, figure out what I watch on youtube, whatever, it’s already treading that line since it would be unreasonable to do that offline. But before they touch anything that is reasonable to expect privacy on, they better have a good reason. And really, it’s a huge waste of time to sift through all that extra data. Just like in real life, I think it makes more sense to develop ways of determining risk level. For instance, you don’t search every car on the street for drugs, but if you see someone leave a suspected dealing location, it might make sense to put them under some extra scrutiny to get a warrant to search their car. So why not do the same for online? Someone buys books on Amazon, watches cat videos on youtube, and posts stupid memes on Facebook, it’s an invasion of their privacy and a waste of resources to look deeper into them, but if they purchase items that could be used to construct bombs, visit sites about terrorism, then it may well be reasonable to go through their private information.

The idea of “if you have nothing to hide, it shouldn’t bother you”, to me, is one of the scariest frames of mind out there. As a nation, one of our base principles is supposed to be innocent until proven guilty and, to me, the idea that I have to consent to searches to prove I’m not a terrorist is a violation of that principle.

And really, when you break the down the 2nd and 4th amendments to the underlying intent, I think they’re both based on the same idea of distrust in the government and empowerment of the individual. The 2nd was specifically concern with tyrannical government and the ability of individuals to defend themselves against it and the 4th is as much a protection against a tyrannical government invading our privacy and confiscating our property. Whether they actually apply directly today is less relevant that the underlying idea that the government needs limitations on it’s power and the citizens should be wary of relenquishing their rights to the government. And that’s where the words of someone like Ben Franklin come in, is it worth invading the privacy of the vast majority of Americans for a chance at catching a handful of terrorists?

46

So the militia in my state uses automatic weapons and hand grenades. Are you saying that my right to keep and bear automatic weapons and hand grenades should not be infringed?

Or do you just read the first clause of the second amendment in the most anti-gun was possible?

Besides, the Supreme Court has already spoken on this. It is for now a settled issue, the first clause does not limit or expand the second clause.

Not to mention the criminals that get released based on violations of the 4th amendment.

Its one thing to adapt the constitution to new situations, it is anentirely different thing to ignore the plain language of the constitution because society has changed to the point where a lot of people don’t like guns anymore. We have an amendment process for that.

I’m not quite sure that gun rights advocates would agree with the part I bolded.

There are over 300 million guns out there, many in the hands of people who don’t give a shit if you let them have guns or not, they are not relying on the second amendment to own guns. You would restrict the rights of law abiding citizens to arm themselves by passing laws that would have little if any effect on the outlaws. How is that good public policy?

Your assumptions about whther or not we need a right to keep and bear arms supposes all sorts of things. It supposes the continuous rule of law, there have been several cases where the rule of law broke down and citizens were left to fend for themselves (see LA riots).

A lot of people who aren’t really concerned about Obama wielding this sort of power are concerned about how this power would be used by lesser men in the white house. Well, a lot of gun advocates aren’t really concerned about our democracy in its current form but what might be coming down the road. I don’t think its very likely and I don’t think that such a tyranny could sneak up on us absent a global catastrophe but if the great recession had gone another way, we were staring into the abyss 5 years ago and we could have tipped over if congress acted back then the way they act right now. We could have been looking at Mad Max world and resolving our disputes in the Thunnderdome.

That is not how judges interpret the law (nor should they). What you call public policy is actually just personal preference. A preference thatmay not be shared by the majority of Americans (at least with respect to the personal right to own a handgun or rifle (at least the ones that don’t have pistol grips and bayonet lugs).

I’m still not sure how conducting surveillance with a warrant from the FISA court violates the 4th amendment. I remember Bush getting a lot of grief during his administration for going around the FISA court to conduct surveillance, now we give Obama grief for collecting metadata after getting a warrant from the FISA court.

What difference is there between someone wants to sidestep or bend the second amendment because they realize it can’t be repealed and someone who wants to keep the second ame3ndment and wants to sidestep or bend it?

There is a large group of people who want to maintain the right to keep and bear the guns that they personally find useful (say hunting rifles and handguns) but want to limit access to any guns that they persoanlly wouldn’t find much use for (see AWB).

47

Agree 10,000%. It’s amazing how many people in the US have NO IDEA how past governments abused such powers to jail and imprison “troublemakers” (defined, of course, as anyone the people then in power had reason to dislike). The term “Star Chamber” means nothing to them.

The Founding Fathers were well aware of how previous English governments had indeed abused such powers, and they were wise enough to figure any government, given such power, would eventually succumb to the temptation to misuse it just as the English Crown had done. And as we’re belatedly discovering now, once those rights are surrendered, it can be all but impossible to get them back.

48

/snark So how many lives have amendments 3 and 13 cost us?

They just need a reason, good is too subjective. The threwshhold is pretty low. The point of the warrant requirement is to prevent abitrary and capricious exercise of police power.

You do realize that they have been collecting metadata and phone calls to and from known terrorists. Right? Its not just all the phone calls from brown people that are getting monitored.

So we should get rid of security at airports? How about the white house or congress?

49

No, fool, that the National Guard has a right to be armed. :rolleyes: That’s it. That’s what it says.

No, in the plain-English sense. Which, you’ll note, is honest, unlike *your *approach of either ignoring it entirely or pretending that the framers didn’t actually mean anything by it.

Wrong again, gunstroker, they “found” that it applies to self-defense as well as militias, not that it does not modify/limit/explain the other half of the same damn sentence.

Keep on rubbing it. :rolleyes:

50

I’ll grant you the 13th. But one of the uses of quartering troops in private homes was to suppress troublemakers. Do you think if we could put soldiers in the houses of known or suspected criminals, we might just cut down on their ability to carry out their criminal activities (some of which may involve murder)? So yes, the 3rd costs lives.

51

::clears throat::

THE AMENDMENTS OF THE CONSTITUTION ARE ABOUT YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH THE GOVERNMENT, NOT A PRIVATE BUSINESS!

This means that:
[ul]
[li]a company taking information from your e-mail and selling it to another company is not a 4th Amendment violation[/li][li]A company blocking you from posting on its message board is not a 1st Amendment violation[/li][li]And just for good measure, a company barring you from coming into their building with a gun is not a 2nd Amendment violation.[/li][/ul]

Stop fucking confusing the government with a private business!

Thank you. Keep calm and carry on.

52

Arguably, that’s not always true. The First Amendment, for example, specifically says it’s prohibiting Congress from doing something. But the Second Amendment doesn’t contain that qualification. It says simply “shall not be infringed” rather than “shall not be infringed by any law”. So arguably it’s a prohibition placed on everyone not just on the government.

53

Sorry, but no case interprets the law this way. I’m free to ban guns all I want. I’m free (under the constitution) to treat blacks differently. I’m free to ban any book on my property I want to.

54

To be honest, if it was me, we’d do something about the apportionment of Senators or even the Senate itself first.

At the time the Founding Fathers created the Senate and the there were just 13 states, the largest state, New York, was only about six times the size of the smallest state, Rhode Island.

I don’t want to think about just how much larger, in terms of population, California is than Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, either of the Dakotas or a number of other states. IIRC I think California has more people than the combined population of the 18 smallest states.

More telling though, at the time the Constitution was drafted, the 7 smallest states still accounted for almost half the population while today the smallest 38(!) states account for less than 20% of the population.

Sure the founders were anti-majoritarian, but I’m sure they’d never have crafted the Senate the way they did if they could have dreamed of just how large the US would become.

55

I’m just pointing out what the text says.

56

Woo- that 18 year old vote, what a KILLER! Ditto for DC electoral votes, universal suffrage, congressional pay increase limits. It’s a wonder we haven’t run out of body bags.

57

Tell that to the people of Afghanistan. Tell that to the peoples of Bosnia and Croatia.

58

Or maybe they’d have kept the Senate the same, but instituted some rules on how large or small a state’s population could be before it had to subdivide into several smaller states (if too big) or merge with another state (if too small). I agree with you that they never imagined how divergent the various states’s populations would become over time, and how it’s complicating our governance.

59

The Supreme cort disagrees with you. They think that there is an individual right to be armed. Are you really ignorant of that fact or are you trying to make some other point that I am not understanding?

"The Amendment’s prefatory clause announces a purpose, but does not limit or expand the scope of the second part, the operative clause. "

You can keep rolling eyes but you are being ignorant and you seem to revel in your ignorance. Its like you are a Republican who was born into a family of liberals so you have all the Republican instincts and all the liberal talking points.

Your anti-gun perspective is the result of ignorance and fear, the source of Republican power. Don’t go to the dark side, they don’t really have cookies. Step back from the edge and stop being such a kneeJERK.

60

Tell that to my wife. There was definitely some infringement on my right to keep and bear arms when I ran out of room in my safe and rather than let me get another safe, she proposed that I sell things I don’t want to make room for things I do want. So I ended up pack everything in tighter, I sold a gun once when I was in college because it was a peice of shit and I still regret selling it.

good point.

Well its not just the thirteenth but I take your point. Our rights and freedoms come with a cost. Frequently in lives and blood. The cost is just more obvious with the second amendment than it is with the others.