not things that you do...
It's easy to defend the things we like. It's easy to defend the people we like. It's easy to conceive that the things and people we like and want for ourselves should be our "right."
But rights aren't about things we like. Rights are about things we don't like. Defending free speech is about defending your enemies right to speak. It's about speech and things that fall under the 1st ammendment that we despise. When the Supreme Court upheld Larry flynt's rights, they weren't endorsing Hustler or even what he said specifically about Rev. Falwell. They were defending his right to speak, not his actual speech.
In fact, the end result, as history has shown, is that it is the reverand's speech rights that have benefitted over the years since he lost his case with the Hustler publisher more than Flynt has benefitted. Isn't it ironic that the case that defended the preacher's foe back then has been cited, directly or inderectly in protecting religious speech?
I hate flag burning. I think it's a disgrace. I can think of 1000 better ways to protest a grievance with the government. But I don't want to ban it. I don't want to take away your right to burn it. And even if 100% of us don't want to burn a flag, I still don't want to ban it. Afterall, other than the potential fire hazard and slight environmental impact, it really hurts no one. It is an exercize of free speech. If the local police want to arrest them for arson, ok. But leave the Constitution alone.
I'm not the biggest fan of guns in the world. Where i've done some hunting and have no problems at all with anyone who hunts for food especially, that's not what the second ammendment is about to me. The 2nd ammendment, to me, is the granting of the right of arming themselves to the people. This was about the distrust of government, arguably justified, in my view, by the people. Since the government can crush the people with a gun, the people should be able to stop an unjust government with that same gun. It's the same checks and balances theme that runs throughout our Constitution.
The people, in this context, is the law abiding. felons who have shown their lack of an ability to use a gun lawfully shouldn't have one. Someone who is mentally ill in a way that could affect their judgement, should not have a gun.
Keep in mind, the forefathers didn't really have much of a concept of mental illness. Most of the mentally ill to them were demonically posessed. But even with the misdiagnosis, i'm convinced they didn't make it a practice to hand a demon a musket.
And as far as hunting weapons go, for them, they were pretty much one and the same musket. But regardless, I am confident that a society that primarily hunted for their food with those muskets weren't even considering taking away a gun from a hunter in the hills of Pennsylvania. The colonies were a little spread out for that to be practical.
But the guns in the towns, the ones that weren't being used so much, would be the more immediate concern to a government that wanted to surpress a people. That was the check on government that they didn't want messed with.
Fast forward to today.
Today, there is a big difference between a hunting gun and one used to kill in many instances. yes, there are "dual purpose" weapons, but many guns only have 1 intended purpose.
And I despise assault weapons. We all know, regardless of where we stand on gun issues, that these guns are made to kill. And not bambi.
But the principle of the 2nd ammendment is about checks and balances. It's all about the right of the people to keep their government in check by being on an equal footing arms wise.
In fact, one could extend that to mean that any law abiding citizen should be able to own any piece of arms they can safely and law-abingly own. A tank? Yes. A missle? If it can be safely contained and maintained, sure. If the military can own it, so can we. Maybe if the world had more policies like that since the days of muskets, all governments, not just ours, might actually give the respect to the people they serve if they couldn't just use their power of the gun to oppress and supress any and all unpopular ideas and thought.
I'm not sure I go that far in this day and age, after all, we are where we are. And allowing anyone to own sophisticated pieces of arms with nuclear capability isn't very smart. Especially since we can't seem to keep guns out of the hands of people who are mentally ill and an imminent danger to themselves and others.
But let's assume we do actually "bite the bullet" and start a responsible system to keep the guns out of the hands of the derranged and violently criminal. The question of the check against the government still remains.
And i'll still detest assault weapons.
I still personally choose not to have any guns in my home, which has small children.
And i'll still support the 2nd ammendment.