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Comment by tristor | Hacker News Reader

> Reasonable limits on rights has always been constitutional.

Citation needed. I don't know how more unambiguous the framers could get than "shall not be infringed".

Setting aside my personal feelings on the matter, this just seems to be a bad argument which is not in evidence. I've read the Constitution thoroughly on more than one occasion, I don't see anything within that makes it seems as if the framers thought ignoring what was written in plain English and skirting its intent was a-okay.

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Citation? 40 years of Supreme Court rulings. You right to free speech has its limits. As does every other right.

It always strikes me as odd that so many Americans look at the constitution as if it was a holy text from the founding fathers that must be followed and left unchanged, even though they are usually discussing amendments...

The Bill of Rights is meant to be a declaration of immutable rights of human beings. It always strikes me as odd that people view these as permissions given from some higher authority that can be changed. The reason they are so viciously argued for is because it is the only thing we can point to that enshrines the idea that we have individual rights that cannot be legislated away.

Nobody’s discussing an amendment here, at no point did they suggest it should remain unchanged, and concerns over interpretation apply to any future amendments anyways.

Picking up a gun you’ve found from the larger cultural war and shooting random commenters with it is fun, but quite inappropriate for HN from what I’ve seen of it.

> Nobody’s discussing an amendment here

Yes they are, the comment above me has this:

> I don't know how more unambiguous the framers could get than "shall not be infringed".

That's the second amendment, is it not?

Based on the kinds of things I see people posting on social media, I think the attitude regarding amendment #2 stems from fear. Guns make them feel safe. Including feeling safe from the government who they fear will come to try to do things like silence them and destroy their ways of thinking or even cause physical harm. So it causes real conflict for them when the government wants to put limits on guns.

On top of that, the 2nd amendment itself is about defending against the government. It says that armed citizens are necessary to be able to form a well-regulated militia. The founding fathers had just broken free of an oppressive government, so they wanted to be sure it was possible for states to break free again if necessary.

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