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Comment by Consultant32452 | Hacker News Reader

The Constitution is meaningless without a culture that backs it up. For example, in spite of the 2nd Amendment you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm. That's not an argument or a judgement about the state of things, just an observation.

Right now there's a big debate about whether our government is structurally functioning for the purpose of literally murdering black people. To put it lightly, that's a very different function than to "promote the general welfare."

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> The Constitution is meaningless without a culture that backs it up.

This is true for corporate charters as well, but it doesn't mean that either a corporation or a government "don't have purpose" without a culture that drives towards that purpose. You could also say that in spite of any corporate charter, the only true purpose of any public corporation is to provide value for shareholders, and the culture of many companies is often not aligned with that.

> you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm

This is blatantly false.

> This is blatantly false.

Is there anywhere in the US that an adult needs a permit to get an abortion? Can your right to an abortion be taken away upon conviction of a non-violent crime? Does the government reserve some categories of abortion for itself and deny them to you?

Not every true statement is politically expedient.

The US government has been doing a pretty good job of not killing black people. It's mainly state and local governments that are getting criticism for it.

Also, the constitution that founded the federal government is not the same document that founds local and state governments. There are some things in it that the federal government has forced local governments to do, but in general, state and local governments have purposes outlined in entirely different documents. My state government's founding document didn't task my government with "promoting the general welfare".

Please. The Supreme Court has 5 justices that are looking for a reason to outlaw abortion. The president and the Senate have put judges on the bench with lifetime appointments that are pro-2nd amendment and anti-choice. Even most democrats won’t go near any meaningful gun control.

> For example, in spite of the 2nd Amendment you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm.

Still staying away from value judgements, I don't think this claim is obviously true (both are regulated), so it's maybe not the greatest example of your point.

For the sake of argument, I'm willing to accept the idea that gun rights and abortion rights are equally restricted/regulated. That would confirm my premise that the Constitution is powerless. Because only one of those things is explicitly guaranteed, but that explicit guarantee was not successful in warding off restrictions.

Court rulings on these issues are aligned with the culture at the time, not the letter or intent of the law.

The balance of firearm control to abortion control can still be viewed in accordance to whatever “promotes the general welfare” means. If I may extend compiler terminology to the legal code, there is a distinction here between the declarative preamble which defines the purpose of the USA and the procedural amendments which defines functions like freely available firearms for militias, banning private slavery and defining presidential lines of succession.

> For example, in spite of the 2nd Amendment you have more legal right to an abortion in this country than you do a firearm

Unrestricted gun ownership seems to be at odds with the 2nd Amendment's "well-regulated militia".

This is very much going off topic of the original point, as I figured it would, but it is well established jurisprudence in the US that the 2nd amendment doesn't mean that gun ownership is unrestricted. Just in the same way that the 1st amendment doesn't grant people unlimited freedom to slander or libel.

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