Freedom, rights, the Second Amendment and slippery slopes.

  I'm a big fan of rights and freedoms. I think that I'm pretty lucky to live in a country where, for the most part, you're free to live your life the way you see fit. There are some restrictions, mostly in the name of "the public interest," and by and large I'm OK with those. My neighbour can't dump toxic waste in my garden, I can't drink a pitcher of margaritas and drive home. You can't cry "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre if your only goal is to incite panic. Restrictions like that help bolster us as a society and enable us to move forward without having to worry about needing to protect ourselves from quite so many dangers.

  I believe that the most effective government is not the one that is (metaphorically) positioned over the citizenry, pressing down on it - but rather the one that is structured beneath the citizens, boosting and bolstering everyone, giving them basic structure and support to freely seek their own goals and agendas. My perfect government is part cheerleader and part wire boundary fence; there to cheer you on and help inspire you to greater success, but also lurking at the edges of acceptable. It protects us from the most dire of circumstances - even if we've brought them on ourselves.




  I like a government that will - for the most part - stay out of my life and let me live the way I choose, but that won't let me die of hunger or neglect. I don't believe that anyone should be dying of hunger and/or neglect - especially in this country.

  Having rights and being free is kind of the point of this crazy experiment known as "America" - it's right there in flourished script in our founding documents. We hold these truths to be self-evident[1] is the start of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. The American Colonies were getting the shaft from the Crown of British Empire, and we revolted. We structured the fledgling government in such a way as to protect the very rights that we wax poetical about in the DoI.

  Which brings us to the subject of the Second Amendment and the slippery slope. Normally, I hate slippery slope arguments, but just hear me out.

  Having just overthrown a "tyranical" government, the founders of the new American government felt the need to specifically enumerate a fair number of rights into the new Constitution, to ensure their protection. Eight of the first ten Amendments call out rights as specifically protected. The Ninth states that any rights *NOT* specifically enumerated were not denied simply because some had been called out. The Tenth empowers the States.

  When these documents were written, about half of the group we recognize as "Founding Fathers" owned other human beings - essentially denying their slaves they very rights and freedoms that they had  just finished telling the world that everyone possessed. I honestly don't know how they held that dichotomy in their heads. It took nearly ninety years before slavery was formally abolished and the Constitution updated (via the Thirteenth, Fourteen, and Fifteenth Amendments) to ensure that no one could be denied their basic rights, and that no person in America could own another. It was another nearly sixty years before women were granted the right to vote with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.

  It took us almost a hundred and fifty years before everyone in America was on something resembling equal footing with regards to voting, rights, and protections. There's still a ways to go on the civil rights front, but it's worlds better now than it was.

  The point being, the Founders were wise enough to know they didn't know everything, and they built in a way to change the system. We've used that power seventeen times since they put their names to paper, and nearly all of the changes we've made have been to expand or protect the rights and freedoms of the citizenry. The Reconstruction Amendments changed how people of African descent were treated in the eyes of the law. Women got to vote. The District of Columbia got representation in Congress. All in all, we've been using the power to change our governing documents to make us all freer.

  The only time we have used this power to REVOKE rights was with the Eighteenth Amendment, banning the sale, distribution and consumption of alcohol. It was later nullified by the Twenty-First.

  Stay with me, there's a point coming.

  Only once in our history have We, the People used the power to amend the Constitution to deprive ourselves of something. We later reversed that. Arguments about the erosion of our rights and protections are valid, but not just now.

  We have never amended the Constitution to revoke or limit a specifically enumerated right

  Never. Not once.

  I like to think that we're smarter than that.

  We haven't done that because it makes no sense to do it. Our rights should expand, not shrink.

  In the two-hundred-and-thirty-something history of this country, there has never been a serious challenge to the Third Amendment, mainly because our troops have their own barracks, and it's really never come up (there is Engblom v. Carey[2] from 1982, but it was not really a direct Constitutional challenge). That doesn't mean that we ought to remove the Third, simply because it isn't applicable.

  The slippery slope is that if We the People decide that a specifically enumerated right - any enumerated right - doesn't really apply anymore and strip its protection form the Constitution, it will be that much easier to have it happen again. It's like having a $100 bill in your pocket - it's hard to justify to yourself breaking that big of a bill, but once it's a couple of $20s and some coin - that cash seems to just vanish. Once we deprive ourselves, voluntarily, of a right, it makes the next iteration that much easier for us to justify.

  After all, now we have precedent. We've done this before, and it wasn't so bad, was it? Nobody's REALLY gonna force you to house and feed troops in your home, that's just silly. What about that $20 civil trial thing? When's the last time that ever came up? Heck, that part of the Bill of Rights has never been fully integrated into Supreme Court jurisprudence, so why do we waste space and time on something that doesn't matter?

  Don't even get me started on the Sixth and Eighth Amendments. If ever there were artifacts of quaint 18th-Century ideals that doesn't apply in today's faced-paced cyber post-9/11 world, it's these. Fair, speedy, open trials where a person faces their accusers, is provided with adequate defense and an ability to provide witnesses in that defense do nothing but HAMSTRING the War on Drugs and the War on Terror. LIVES are at stake! We don't have time for this charade, we need to be able to extract information and vengeance upon our enemies, foreign and domestic. The faster we remove these roadblocks, the safer we all become.

  And so forth, and so on, ad infinitum. If it sounds ridiculous, I don't think it's that far-fetched. I've heard variations of these arguments against the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments from more than one source. Oddly, it usually happens to be some beer-bellied chairforce commando who preens like a peacock about how many and what types of guns he owns, and what he'd do to Those People if only he was over there. Serious hard-on for the Second Amendment (and usually the Tenth, because States Rights and The South Will Rise Again), but damn all the rest. Freedom of religion? Hell, the Bible is one of the founding documents of this country, and you're free to go to any Christian church you want. Fourth Amendment? Hippy, if you don't have anything to hide, then you ain't got nuthin' to fear (but stay the hell outta mah life, gub'mint!). Cruel and unusual punishment? Just do it a bunch of times, it's no longer "unusual." Problem solved.

  I hate that guy, in all his iterations.

  Several of our rights are under attack, from ourselves, and not just the ones enumerated in the Second. I happen to be a big, big fan of ALL of our Amendments, and want to see them preserved and protected. I don't want to see us willingly give up ANY rights in exchange for what we view as some kind of security.

  The Second Amendment is a very polarizing thing, and I think it's mostly because the right to keep and bear arms is a very active (as opposed to passive) right, and it's the only enumerated set of rights that deal with a physical thing. It's concrete, you can actively express your right to keep and bear arms, often at the same time. Your right to privacy is a passive right - it acts behind the scenes, and only is apparent when it's been violated. That goes for most of the other enumerated rights. The rights from the First Amendment - speech, assembly, petition for redress, press, and religion, are a bit more active, but do not deal with discrete physical artifacts.

  It makes it easy for guns to be the focal point of gun violence and its place in our culture, and as gun ownership declines (the number of firearms owned is soaring, but it's fewer people owning more guns) there is less of a connection between people and guns. For large numbers of Americans, their only familiarity with guns at all is through personal tragedy. Their relationship to the Second Amendment is academic at best, and clouded with loss. That's understandable. However, striking it from the books is as great of a folly as striking any of the others.

  There is room in the debate, middle ground between "no guns" and "nukes for all" (I actually know people who are personally offended and feel it's a Constitutional violation that nuclear/chemical/biological weapons are illegal for civilians to possess). I agree that some level of restriction is good for us as a society, as do an overwhelming majority of American. Finding the point at which we can all best agree needs to be our goal and no matter what answer we come up with, we have to accept that some people will never be happy with it. That's what happens in a democracy, but it's a small price to pay for freedom and liberty.