The ACLU, an idea

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Let me point out that the original idea was to examine changing the ACLU's focus on 2A to becoming actively supportive of RKBA, not to bash the ACLU. The latter is cheap and easy for a lot of folks here and certainly not helpful in advancing the OP's idea. It's awfully lazy to just toss stones.
 
While the ACLU joined the NRA and ten or so other citizen's rights organizations in a letter to the Clinton Administration denouncing paramilitary tactics used in the raid on Waco, the ACLU director was quoted back in 1979 as favoring a ban on handguns, but such onerous attacks on basic liberties would be required to enforce it, he would have to oppose his own idea.

ACLU position on gun rights has always been ambiguous. The Bill of Rights should be ALL or NOTHING.
 
Carl N. Brown said:
ACLU position on gun rights has always been ambiguous. The Bill of Rights should be ALL or NOTHING.
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Totally agree. So, LET THEM KNOW! Google tells me that the NRA has over 4 million members while the ACLU only 500,000. Yet, the ACLU seems to get a lot done with their resources (I think the NRA could learn a few things from how the ACLU gets stuff done). Next thing is to consider what the impact could be if every NRA member were to write the ACLU and push for support of the 2A, that's 8x more people than the ACLU claims in their entire organization! If the ACLU has a single calculator, they can see that their 2008 income was $32M (from their website) and that if they could win just $8 from every NRA member by improving their stance on the 2A then they could double their budget. That's some powerful math if you just lost over 20% of your budget.

Seriously, I don't get the resistance to this idea here. I am sure plenty of people here will write a known anti-gun Congressperson, so why the negativity? Another ally is something we could use.
 
They will go to bat for anyone if their Constitutional rights are being infringed. I've seen enough cases to know that. Thing is, the "ACLU-bashers" only talk about the ones that bother them. When they went to bat for the Skokie marchers, they got immunity from the "they're all liberals!" insult. Anyway, I don't really care all that much, I just don't like to see untruth on the Net and the ACLU are not the bad guys some people make them out to be. Just like the NRA is not a bunch of crazed gun-waving freakos.
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I would like to see them take a lot LESS "establishment of religion" cases and a lot more "free exercise thereof" cases.
 
Ashcons said:
Dear Mr. _____,
Thank you for the question about the ACLU's position on the Second Amendment. The national ACLU is neutral on the issue of gun control.

We believe that the Constitution contains no barriers to reasonable regulations of gun ownership. If we can license and register cars, we can license and register guns. The question therefore is not whether to restrict arms ownership, but how much to restrict it. If that is a question left open by the Constitution, then it is a question for Congress to decide.

You can find more about the ACLU's positions at http://www.aclu.org

If you are not already an ACLU member, we encourage you to help support our aggressive work on the issues you care about. To join please visit http://www.aclu.org or call 1-888-567-ACLU. They seem to ignore that without individual rights, there are no collective rights. Wonder how they'd feel about licensing speeches or writing.

Sincerely,
D. Barber
Correspondence Manager, American Civil Liberties Union


As you can see, they're "neutral" on gun control. Obviously gun registration is no different than car registration. This irony really made me laugh, "we encourage you to help support our aggressive work on the issues you care about." They seem to selectively ignore the fact that without individual rights, there are no collective rights. Bet I could guess how they would feel about licensing for speaking and writing.
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"If we can license and register cars, we can license and register guns."

Why do cars = guns?
Of course,the constitution does not have an amendment stating that the right to own and operate cars shall not be infringed. If it were written in the 20 th century it might, but it doesn't - and present day restrictions on cars are much less prohibitive than gun restrictions. I like the ACLU but their position on the second amendment is really out of step with their position on the rest of the bill of rights, and they seem unwilling to change.
 
They're right... guns aren't a right, they're a very extensive privilege. This privilege remains in effect as long as you don't do anything that the collective finds offensive. We can rant and rave all we want, but the truth is that we are in the... We're in a police state :banghead: and the highest per capita prison incarceration rate. Now all we have to do is make hatespeech a felony and...(signal lost)
 
Some state ACLUs have broken with the national ACLU on the Second Amendment.

Most notable is the ACLU of NV.

ACLU of NV said:
In light of the United States Supreme Court's decision concerning the D.C. handgun ban (District of Columbia v. Heller) the ACLU of Nevada considers it important to clearly state its position regarding the right to bear arms. The Nevada ACLU respects the individual's right to bear arms subject to constitutionally permissible regulations. The ACLU of Nevada will defend this right as it defends other constitutional rights. This policy was formulated by our afilliate Board in light of both the U.S. Constitution and the clearly-stated individual right to bear arms as set out in the Nevada Constitution's Declaration of Rights.
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Some state ACLUs have broken with the national ACLU on the Second Amendment.
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Oh yes, good point. The state organizations are a completely different story. The Texas ACLU has also been in several pro 2A fights with NRA and TSRA.
 
OP, your idea is good in theory and well meaning. However, the ACLU mostly consists of a bunch of constitution hating communists who only want to further the progressive agenda. Therefore they will not get a dime from me. They take advantage of well meaning people like you to stay funded.
 
Does anybody actually know how the national ACLU policy is set?

Anybody actually know how to join the ACLU at a level that influences that policy?

How about just joining your state ACLU and affecting their policy on 2A? If the majority of state organizations break with the national organization and actively endorse the Heller decision on their own perhaps we'd get some real movement? It's embarrassing to 2A supporting ACLU members that the national ACLU would disagree with SCOTUS and cling to the collective right view. Perhaps we can use that to change the state organizations and eventually force the national to change.

Of course, that would require work and that's a lot more challenging than being a hater.
 
Do any of the better writers on the forums have a letter template suggestion for writing to state ACLU to break this problem down into more manageable parts as Hso suggests?

The Arkansas ACLU site makes absolutely no mention of the Second Amendment on its site from what I can see and does not even list gun control or gun ownership on its issues page!
 
Anyone remember which state ACLUs have carried out RKBA supporting work?

If we can find out which ones have taken the individual right as the correct view of the 2A we may be able to find the individual attorneys and supporters who championed adoption of our philosophy and simply ask them for advice on how to change our individual state organizations.
 
When a nutcase outfit called Citizens Against Guns proposed the roundup and execution "without the nonsense of a trial" for anyone who owned a gun, had ever owned a gun, or whose ancestors had ever owned a gun, they claimed to have the blessing of the ACLU. I contacted the ACLU, which never specifically denied the statement or denounced the idea of killing 200 million people. They simply said that gun ownership was not an individual right, which seems to imply that if a lunatic government did decide to murder all gun owners, the ACLU would not object.

Jim
 
When a nutcase outfit called Citizens Against Guns proposed the roundup and execution "without the nonsense of a trial" for anyone who owned a gun, had ever owned a gun, or whose ancestors had ever owned a gun, they claimed to have the blessing of the ACLU. I contacted the ACLU, which never specifically denied the statement or denounced the idea of killing 200 million people. They simply said that gun ownership was not an individual right, which seems to imply that if a lunatic government did decide to murder all gun owners, the ACLU would not object.
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Can't help but wonder how that would have worked out for them.:eek:

You can't fix stupid.
 
"If we can license and register cars, we can license and register guns."

If licensing and registration of cars was as discretionary and punitive as the gun licensing and registration laws that get "A" grades from Handgun Control Inc. (aka Brady Campaign), there would be denouncements by ACLU (and evryone else) for blatant violation of due process and equal justice.

There is a cost/benefit justification for car control laws, from driver safety to financial responsibility. The Centers for Disease Control 2003 and the National Research Council 2004 could find no evidence that there was any benefit from any of the gun control laws so far. Guns and cars are different.

Gun laws are based on "crime control" but controlling gun crime by piling restrictions on legal gun owners is like controlling prostitution by piling restrictions on marriage licenses.
 
Google tells me that the NRA has over 4 million members while the ACLU only 500,000. Yet, the ACLU seems to get a lot done with their resources (I think the NRA could learn a few things from how the ACLU gets stuff done).
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I'll bet the ACLU has a higher percentage of members who are lawyers. That probably has something to do with it.

This leads to the next question.... how to get more lawyers to join the NRA?
 
For a long time, it seemed to me that liberals (civil rights activists, civil libertarians, whoever) cared about every amendment in the bill of rights except the second, and conservative cared only about the second amendment exclusively. In the 90s and early 00s I heard many a conservative gun owner pontificate about the absurdity of Miranda rights, warrants, allowing criminals to have lawyers, etc. Rulings against unlawful search and seizure were seen by my conservative friends as "giving rights to criminals" - they only started to care about fourth amendment rights when those rights were violated as part of a gun seizure.

I'm a member of both the ACLU and the NRA. I like the whole Bill of Rights. I would love to see the ACLU revise their opinion of the second amendment, to bring it more in line with their opinion of other individual rights spelled out (or implied) byt the BOR. Not sure it will happen, but pro-gun ACLU members ought to agitate, and let the organisation know that it's stance on gun ownership is out of touch with some of it's membership.
 
squinty said:
For a long time, it seemed to me that liberals (civil rights activists, civil libertarians, whoever) cared about every amendment in the bill of rights except the second, and conservative cared only about the second amendment exclusively. In the 90s and early 00s I heard many a conservative gun owner pontificate about the absurdity of Miranda rights, warrants, allowing criminals to have lawyers, etc. Rulings against unlawful search and seizure were seen by my conservative friends as "giving rights to criminals" - they only started to care about fourth amendment rights when those rights were violated as part of a gun seizure.

I'm a member of both the ACLU and the NRA. I like the whole Bill of Rights. I would love to see the ACLU revise their opinion of the second amendment, to bring it more in line with their opinion of other individual rights spelled out (or implied) by the BOR. Not sure it will happen, but pro-gun ACLU members ought to agitate, and let the organization know that it's stance on gun ownership is out of touch with some of it's membership.
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The no fly list is a good example of this right/left disconnect. The link Clem posted berated the ACLU for opposing the no-fly list...liberals railed against the no fly list for years as an unconstitutional violation of civil rights, restricting citizens' freedom to travel based on suspicion alone, with no due process, no chance to appeal or face one's accuser's. Conservatives claimed this was a liberal plot to aid terrorism. To quote the site Clem linked:
"The ACLU has opposed almost everything the government has done to fight terrorism! From the no-fly list to stronger border control, the ACLU has been there to oppose it....in order to grant immunity and protection for sworn enemies of America to carry out their assault on America."
Now liberals are claiming that people on the no-fly list should be barred from purchasing guns, and using the same specious argument - why should we arm TERRORISTS. So now conservatives are up in arms, and have finally rediscovered civil liberties, and suddenly, after eight years supporting it, they realize why the no-fly list is such a despotic tool. Could it be that the ACLU is interested in protecting American citizens from the excesses of government, rather than enabling terrorists? I'll say it again, they are wrong wrong wrong about the second amendment. But they aren't the communist party. There is still an American Communist party, and an American Socialist Workers party. They are separate organizations from the ACLU, the ACLU is not them. To answer the question posed at the top of "Stop the ACLU," to wit :

"Terrorists Have Rights, Too ?"

-no, but accused terrorists do. Just because the government makes a claim about you, that doesn't mean it's true, and mere assertion isn't a good enough reason to circumvent anyone's civil rights to habeas corpus, due process, or any of the other legal constructs (including the second amendment) designed to protect us from tyranny.

So I'm going to write a letter to the ACLU stating that I disagree with their interpretation of the second amendment, and urging them to reconsider in light of the Heller (and hopefully McDonald) decision, and suggest that I'll withdraw my support if they stick to their bs "collective right" definition.
 
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I think we'll get more traction with the state ACLU than national so I hope everyone that intends to send something to the national organization puts at least as much effort into their state.
 
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