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by elliekelly 2598 days ago
This is what I don't understand about the hard-line 2A advocates. They're so concerned with being able to "defend against the government" if needed but guns are no longer the government's biggest source of power over the people. Data and surveillance are far more powerful in 2019 than any weapon.

Full disclosure: I'm a gun owner. But I'd swap the second amendment for a data privacy amendment in a heartbeat.
2 comments
dragonwriter 2598 days ago
> This is what I don't understand about the hard-line 2A advocates. They're so concerned with being able to "defend against the government" if needed but guns are no longer the government's biggest source of power over the people.

They also fail to realize that the 2A already failed, and that it's premise wasn't that gun ownership protected against a tyrannical government. It's that gun ownership was necessary to the militia-based security posture which was the alternative to relying on a powerful standing military and armed police forces for external and internal security, and that preventing the creation and reliance on those large standing forces in the first place was the safeguard against tyranny.

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jerf 2598 days ago
"But I'd swap the second amendment for a data privacy amendment in a heartbeat."

In practice, that would be a bad trade, because you can verify that you still have your 2A rights by being in possession of a gun, whereas with data privacy, all you have are solemn assurances that your rights are being respected, and when you discover you were lied to and you didn't actually have data privacy after all, you've got nothing.

If you mean some sort of impossibly-strong, enforced-by-God-or-aliens data privacy amendment, maybe. But that's not on the table.

(My point here is independent of the question of the 2A itself, but just looking at it as the proposed trade. Trading something concretely verifiable for promises that the promising people have every motivation to break secretly and you have no ability to audit is a bad trade.)

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elliekelly 2598 days ago
I definitely see your point. Though I would argue most of our rights are intangible and without ability to audit yet they're (so far, at least mostly) enforced by the court system. Your right to due process, for example. And your right to free speech. And your right against unreasonable government search and seizure. All we have are solemn assurances from the court system that our rights are being protected. So far, at least mostly, it's worked.

Just because something is difficult doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile.

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