3 people, including 15-year-old, shot at Kennywood

I have all my students drop their guns in a basket on my desk before class. Just like with Yondr, they're allowed to grab them if they really need it in case of an emergency.

Consent changes everything.

Yes, Bill Burr took away my constitutional right to text my friends and surf the internet.

Leaning on the Constitution as a holy standard for which we should measure rights and liberties we should have isn't the great standard that people make it out to be, what with the parts that counted some people as 3/5th of a person and prevented half of the population from participating in representative government.

Or we could talk about the reasons the 3/5ths clause exists instead of going to the all-too-easy (and lazy) "the Constitution was racist" argument. The clause's intention was to move the US toward abolition by effectively giving the Southern states (that wanted to keep slavery legal) less representation.

It is a downright disability laid upon the slaveholding States; one which deprives those States of two-fifths of their natural basis of representation. A black man in a free State is worth just two-fifths more than a black man in a slave State, as a basis of political power under the Constitution. Therefore, instead of encouraging slavery, the Constitution encourages freedom by giving an increase of “two-fifths” of political power to free over slave States. So much for the three-fifths clause; taking it at is worst, it still leans to freedom, not slavery; for, be it remembered that the Constitution nowhere forbids a coloured man to vote.

-Frederick Douglass

Plus, it was repealed, which is a good example of the Constitution working as designed.

Do the ToS of this site restrict/infringe upon my rights and liberties?

For real? We could talk about the context of the Second Amendment, to, when reloading a gun meant packing gunpowder into it first, and the one thing that the Federalists and Democratic-Republicans could agree on was making sure they had a standing army at the ready in the wake of the revolution. These concerns make little sense in 21st century America. But you know, we can't talk about "lazy" arguments, right? Just because you think it's lazy doesn't make it untrue. The Constitution was absolutely racist, and for 250 years we're still trying to untangle laws of inequality. See also women's healthcare.

I give the founding fathers some credit... if they didn't think the Constitution was imperfect, they wouldn't have allowed it to be changed.

"Absolutely" racist? Only in the paradox that it should have abolished slavery, but would never have been ratified if it did. And the "racist" clause was supported by a former slave African American abolitionist.

Pretty rare to find a legal document that doesn't have an amendment provision. Not having one is less a sign you thought the document was perfect than it is you didn't know what you were doing. Even a perfect document (not saying the Constitution is or was--its wasn't and isn't -- starts with "more perfect Union" rather than "perfect Union") will often need to be revised as situations change. Longer its in place increases the chances there will be things to change. Framers understood all of that. Though first year law students and people who have no legal training at all do as well.

Including an amendment provision does though cut against the argument advanced by many that the Constitution should be a living, evolving document that changes with the times without the need for amendments. Why include an amendment provision (and why actually amend it several times to address certain wrongs) if its self amending?

I don't understand the question. Is someone arguing to the contrary?

Vater: Nothing you indicated makes it less racist. Pretty sure anything that considers people less than people is going to be in that category. I know you don't mean it this way, but I read it to say, "The Constitution had black friends." That's kind of icky.

This just derails things further and further from gun violence (did anyone see the school shooting in Oakland yesterday?), but I do not understand the American reluctance to acknowledge its past and accept that it is the basis for the problems we still have. You can't be better without self-awareness.

Jeff:

I know you don't mean it this way, but I read it to say, "The Constitution had black friends." That's kind of icky.

You're right, you reading it that way for whatever reason is icky. Thanks for knowing I didn't mean it that way, I guess. That I can't say anything like that without some weird racist inference is a big part of why we can't seem to get past our s****y racist past. To that same point, the 3/5ths clause doesn't exist anymore, again showing that the Constitution worked as designed.

And if the 2nd Amendment gets repealed, it will have worked as designed then, too. Until then, however, here we are.

I don't agree. We can't get beyond our racist past because it's our present.

Jeff:
Leaning on the Constitution as a holy standard for which we should measure rights and liberties we should have isn't the great standard that people make it out to be, what with the parts that counted some people as 3/5th of a person and prevented half of the population from participating in representative government.

The Constitution is a pretty poor document for measuring rights and liberties because it is written not to enumerate rights and liberties, but to limit the degree to which the Federal government (and in certain cases, the States) can infringe on citizens' rights and liberties. The Bill of Rights was not ratified as part of the Constitution because the authors believed it to be unnecessary: all rights not explicitly abridged by the Constitution itself were retained by the States and by the People. The Bill of Rights was established because a plurality of framers thought that establishing the default condition by which the Government's right to infringe upon the people is explicitly limited was not good enough, and that certain rights should be spelled out as explicitly off-limits to Government tyranny. In hindsight, that was probably a very good idea, even though it has caused fairly severe arguments about the role of government in our lives.

The point is, the Constitution is not a very good way to measure rights and liberties because the Constitution's position is essentially that with very few exceptions, ALL rights and liberties are retained by the people!

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

You're absolutely right. I think that was a mistake. They didn't have to enumerate rights, but their failure to point out that they should apply universally to all people is a part of the reason people of color still don't have equal footing, to say nothing of the entire female gender.

In hindsight, that was probably a very good idea, even though it has caused fairly severe arguments about the role of government in our lives.

In hindsight, its clear those who thought the Bill of Rights were not needed (because a federal government of "enumerated" (thus limited) powers couldn't do anything that would necessitate a Bill of Rights) were wrong. Less clear if you are viewing it at the time (big reason why there was discussion/debate on the issue). But very clear now.

And without question the Bill of Rights has its limitations, flaws, etc. But what else do you have in terms of establishing rights and liberties?

Taking it back, do people think that what Bill Burr and a handful of other entertainers are doing infringes on their rights and liberties? At all or in a way that should be prohibited.

A constitution granting equal rights to all wouldn't have been ratified in 1788. Would we be closer to the ideals of the Declaration today had it not been ratified? Would it have been ratified with equal rights for all sometime later? Women weren't given the right to vote in self-governing countries until about 100 years later. Would there even be an United States today? Tough to argue effects of events that didn't happen.

Burr isn't infringing on anyone's rights. He's offering a product with certain terms and conditions, and if you disagree, you don't buy the product. I think that's pretty straight forward.

That's where issues of free speech are grossly misunderstood by a non-trivial number of Americans. Government can't restrict your speech, but private companies, social media, can do whatever the **** they want because you don't have to use their services. If you don't like the Twitter, you can use Trump's little echo chamber thing. People can't get that a private company censoring their own service is free speech. And if there's any question about whether or not a corporation can do that, remember, corporations are people because of Citizens United.

We can't even pass laws that guarantee equality now, let alone 250 years ago. And if we can't do that, then we certainly can't declare the various 'isms as "over."

Thank you for providing the pedantic interpretation of basic human rights.

I believe there's a difference between the 1st Amendment and the basic concept for Free Speech

Do you only allow your neighbors to follow any or no religion because the 1st Amendment told you to, or do you respect their values and view that as a fundamental right in a free society?

You built this site, you pay for the servers, my speech exists because you allow it, but it's funny to talk about a "little echo chamber" while also defending echo chambers.

Did you join here just to troll? You haven't been here long enough to judge this community.

I don't know what my neighbors and religion have to do with anything. If your have a point, make it.

CoasterBuzz is not an echo chamber.

I agree with that. I agree with that.