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Does the Constitution Matter

It went like this:

A pro-gun hot-head posting comments to a CNN article proclaimed that he’d taken an oath to uphold the Constitution long ago and had every intention of putting himself on the line to do so now. The “reasonable” not-against-the-second honest-trust-me commenter said:
What if the Constitution changes?
I answered:

 “I think that when a contract is altered that it's a new contract. The one you swore to uphold is the one you swore to uphold. If it's a different Constitution, you'd have to swear over again to the new Constitution.”

 Apparently this is absurd.



I said:

“And if the Constitution changes it's entirely reasonable for someone who has taken a personal oath to uphold the old version to revert to the level of non-obligation that each person has when he or she is born.” 

I'm told:
“Your comment is about as whacked out as they come.”
I'm told:
“What a cop out. The Constitution was made with a built-in mechanism so the vast majority could change it.”
From one of the main people saying he’d be fine with laws that banned all semi-autos if that’s what people wanted and sees no Constitutional problem with doing that to any gun that fails a “lethality” score built from range, accuracy, rate of fire and magazine capacity…. But who isn’t against guns.

 His “reasonable” opinion:
“Uhm, look around Julie. I'm speaking of reality. The Constitution--and especially the Second Amendment--have already been severely compromised. Go try to buy an RPG. A machine gun. A grenade. An F-22. A drone (plus the FAA wouldn't even let you fly...). A tomahawk missile. A fuel-air bomb. Can't? Well... there's your Second Amendment being violated EVERY SINGLE DAY.”
Well okay then… I guess I’m just fine with that. I’ve been violated so violate me some more.

 I had said:

 “What I hear you say is... I've got no security in my person or my possessions if I'm not in the majority, that the Constitution does not protect the minority from the majority. And yet you'd suggest that anyone worried about the government coming to take their guns away is being a silly NRA stooge.”

 This is what upset me so much that I couldn’t let it go and stayed for no good purpose banging my head on a wall for far too long. The ONLY purpose of the Constitution is to buck majority opinion and to protect those that the majority wishes to control.

 There is no purpose in including “protections” in the Constitution if it is all subject to what people believe is reasonable now. And this opinion is presented as “reasonable” and “intelligent” and objecting that the Constitution means something makes you “wacked out” and it scares me in a very real way that people can make these arguments and think that they’re the thoughtful ones.

 It really and truly scares me.

 Free Speech is not necessary if it only applies to speech people generally agree with. No one would even bother to stick such an insane statement in our founding documents: “You are free to say anything that people like to hear.”

There's no purpose to including Freedom of Religion if it only applies to “freedom of Christian religion or what the majority believe”, which is a real argument I’ve heard.

There is no purpose to including a guarantee of the right to bear arms if it is limited to: "The right to carry whatever weapon the majority, through the enforcement mechanisms of the State, decide they don’t mind you having."

Comments

This might have been from several months ago, but is still goofy. Come on. Even years before, Scalia wrote that his ruling in the Heller case didn't preclude reasonable exclusions or restrictions. There are restrictions to every amendment. The first amendment has five formal restrictions, plus libel and that whole thing about yelling fire in a crowded theater. But you don't hear complaints about that, do you? It's just that 1st amendment defenders have bothered to make and live with exclusions to it that are clear, and those defending the 2nd haven't, erroneously believing their favorite amendment to be absolute.

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