Re: Ed Snowden leaking the secret NSA programs to monitor our communications.
I’ve been marveling at the politicians who believe we must “balance” our individual freedoms against the needs of the nation at large. They make some good points, but where is their willingness to apply that logic to the Second Amendment as well as the Fourth?
“…..the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” That is clear and unambiguous, but so is “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated…”
There is no difference between “infringed” and “violated”, each amendment has the same effect. Yet we are told that, on the one hand, it is critical to interpret the 2nd text literally as it is written, and on the other hand to interpret the 4th text differently.
We have no secret judges or secret courts to handle gun cases, why do we need all that to handle telephone and email cases? There are roughly 30,000 deaths per year due to “keep and bear arms”, twelve people were shot Monday in Chicago alone. Some suggest this is the price to pay for freedom. Maybe they are right, but the 3000 killed by terrorists on 9/11/2001 doesn’t balance well against the 300,000 killed by firearms since then.
To protect ourselves against terrorism (the 3000), says the government, we have to gut the Constitution. But at the same time we don’t gut the constitution to protect the 300,000.
Anyone see a problem with this?