If Heller Decision Acknowledges A Right - Will ACLU Become A Willing Supporter?

[k_dawg]

Did slave owners change their stance after the 14th amendment?

No.

 

[texgunner]

The ACLU does not actually believe much in the individual right of free speech, nor of the individual right to a free press. They consider these to be more collective in nature.

Which belies their socialist leanings.

 

[I'm Thinking...]

"reasonable regulation"

The road to Hell is paved with good intention.

 

[patentmike]

If the court holds that the right to keep and bear arms is a sexual preference, the ACLU will want it taught in public schools.

 

[rdhood]

The ACLU is able to overlook the 2nd because their supporters/constituents took a view that, while not supported in law, had not been challenged due to the difficulty in doing so. That view was that the 2nd was not an individual right, blah blah blah.

Now the ACLU will become hypocrites in order to maintain the views of their supporters. How about "Socialist Civil Liberties Union"

 

[Brett Bellmore]

I'm surprised nobody has brought up the Strossen quote:

Reason: So why doesn't the ACLU challenge gun-control laws on Second Amendment grounds?

Strossen: We reexamine our positions when people come forward with new arguments. On the gun issue, I instituted a reexamination a few years ago in response to a number of things, but the most important one was an article by Sanford Levinson at University of Texas Law School that summarized a wave of new historical scholarship. Levinson's argument was that in the 18th century context, a well-regulated militia meant nothing other than people in the privacy of their homes.

So we looked into the historical scholarship there and ended up not being persuaded. The plain language of the Second Amendment in no way, shape, or form, can be construed, I think, as giving an absolute right to unregulated gun ownership. It says, "A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right to bear arms shall not be infringed." Certainly, when you have the notion of "well-regulated" right in the constitutional language itself, it seems to defy any argument that regulation is inconsistent with the amendment.

Putting all that aside, I don't want to dwell on constitutional analysis, because our view has never been that civil liberties are necessarily coextensive with constitutional rights. Conversely, I guess the fact that something is mentioned in the Constitution doesn't necessarily mean that it is a fundamental civil liberty. So the question becomes, What is the civil-liberties argument of those who would say we should be opposing all gun control? What it comes down to is the very strong belief that having a gun in your home is something that can ultimately fend off the power of a tyrannical government. I find that re- ally unpersuasive in the 20th-century context. Maybe it made sense in the 18th century. I would hope that's the kind of thing we do through words rather than through guns and that, to me, is the function that the First Amendment serves, not the Second Amendment.

They've got it covered: Official ACLU doctrine is that the mere fact that a right is mentioned in the Bill of Rights, and upheld by the Supreme court, doesn't make it a "civil liberty". Being approved of by the ACLU makes a right a "civil liberty", whether or not it's in the Constitution.