Lastly a quick reminder that the 2nd amendment is an amendment, it didn’t make the first draft and it clearly wasn’t a founding principle.
Um, isn’t the Bill of Rights (first 10 Amendments) clearly a founding principle since it was in discussion alongside the original Constitution and was just added a few years later for clarification?
I know specifically they’re referring to the 2nd Amendment but the fact all of the first 10 were ratified at the same time makes it seem like they were all needed.
What do you mean by a founding principle? Obviously not everyone thought the idea of a Bill of Rights was total bullshit, otherwise people like Jefferson and Madison would not have been able to get them in there.
Well, they were- it was just that some of the founders thought those rights were “self evident” and didnt need putting down. They decided that was wrong within two years.
So, yeah, the whole Bill of Rights was there from the start.
[Moderating]
We can factually say that the Bill of Rights wasn’t in the original Constitution, and what the dates were for the ratification of the original and for the first ten amendments. But I’m pretty sure everyone in the discussion already knows that. The question of what counts as “foundational”, however, which is the real topic here, isn’t factual. Moving to IMHO.
My understanding is that some states only accepted the Constitution because the addition of a Bill of Rights was promised. North Carolina for example held off on joining the Union until the process of adding the Bill of Rights was well underway
The argument given can’t really be separated from the gun debate. The shall not be infringed crowd says it can’t be changed because it’s in the Bill of Rights. Others correctly point out it’s called an amendment for a reason. And that’s not even taking into consideration the tons of caselaw interpretating the amendments over the years.
For what it’s worth, the National Archives classifies the Bill of Rights as one of “America’s founding documents” (along iwth the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution).
It’s the one amendment with a justification embedded in the text, which either means that unlike the others, it was not so obvious, or it was so important that a justification was added to provide emphasis.
Or it was felt to be such a strange idea that it wouldn’t stand the test of time unless the justification was right there it the text.
As @Chronos said while moderating, this all turns on “How foundational is foundational enough?” Of course when it comes to 2A conversations, each person’s assumed conclusion drives the rest of their argument, no matter how convoluted it becomes.
The final draft of the constitution had already been approved by congress when Federalists and Anti-Federalists started arguing about whether or not it made for too powerful a federal government. The Anti-Federalists thought certain individual rights ought to be spelled out.
So James Madison red-penned the text of the constitution itself, but everyone said “Nope, can’t do that, because we’ve accepted a final draft, and congress can’t change the text of the constitution.” Any changes had to be in the form of amendments. Then, Madison wrote the Bill of Rights.
Given that while Madison contributed to the constitution, it is the work of several authors plus a final editor, who made sure it used the same language throughout, but Madison wrote the Bill of Rights solo, I think it’s fair to say they are different documents.
Perhaps not Congress, but if the first one was approved and ratified, they could, and can, always ratify a new text. But it presumably was not going to happen so soon, considering all the trouble they had the first time.