7 ms·

> They are an unqualified, categorically "good" organization The ACLU is wonderful, no doubt about that. But I think some people do put an asterisk next to th

by jMyles 10y ago

> They are an unqualified, categorically "good" organization The ACLU is wonderful, no doubt about that. But I think some people do put an asterisk next to the group because of their (obviously somewhat strange) categorization of the protections of the 2nd amendment as outside the scope of American civil liberties.

m3rc 10y ago
What? This is a giant [citation needed]
- throwaway76543 10y ago
  Right here: https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment It's well established that the ACLU refuses to defend the individual civil right to armed self defense.
  - m3rc 10y ago
    That all seems pretty clear to me. It's not up to you to interpret the 2nd Amendment for them. Not to mention that orgs like the NRA have many times more funding than the ACLU and dedicate every action to that one issue. Or the fact that you're dealing with a organization that has been one of the biggest and best defenders of oppressed groups in recent history and you're cranky that they're not gonna help you own a handgun like most of congress is.
    - throwaway76543 10y ago
      Friend, you're having an argument with yourself. I didn't say anything related to any of that. You asked for a cite, I linked you one. That's it.
      - pc86 10y ago
        Any time I read "friend" in this context I feel like you can replace it with just about any word someone wouldn't say in any professional context, and it's more true to the intent.
        bostonpete 10y ago
        I ain't your friend, pal.
        throwaway76543 10y ago
        We're in quite a pickle if de-escalating language is interpreted as rude. Please take this in the manner it was intended: Avoiding an unnecessary argument.
    - stale2002 10y ago
      I am cranky that they aren't willing to make simple statements of support for it. If an organization that was instrumental in protecting your right to a fair and speedy trial, was against opposed to the idea of free speech, I would still condemn that org for holding that specific position, while still recognizing that they have done good in other areas.
fisherjeff 10y ago
I think their reasoning on 2nd amendment work is sound. The NRA and affiliates have ~4x the ACLU's budget to spend on that one single issue, and they have shown themselves to be ruthlessly effective on that front.
- jMyles 10y ago
  But that's not really the point. SSDP and DPA, as specialized, wide-reaching, grassroots organizations, are more effective at drug policy reform, but this doesn't stop the ACLU from recognizing the threats that drug prohibition poses to civil liberties. Similarly, the fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making statements in favor of advances in the rights guaranteed by the second amendment.
thecyborganizer 10y ago
The 2nd amendment has the second largest lobbying organization in the country looking out for it. It doesn't need help from the ACLU.
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  > the second largest lobbying organization in the country I don't think the National Association of Realtors has a dog in this race. [1] http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/lobbying-groups-gop_n_7130040.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/lobbying-groups-gop...
- jMyles 10y ago
  The fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making a simple statement in favor of advances in this particular civil liberty.
  - burkaman 10y ago
    Their position is not simple, but they have a statement: https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment
    - jMyles 10y ago
      That's the document to which I was referring initially. And it definitely reads with a contrived voice, in contrast to most other ACLU lit.
- int_19h 10y ago
  There are some aspects where 2A intersects with other rights, where NRA and others are unwilling to go. One sticking point right now is drugs. Per federal law, any "user of an unlawful substance" is prohibited from firearm ownership, period. This includes anyone in states that legalized marijuana, including medical users. And the feds have been trying to maintain state records for medical marijuana card holders. NRA, SAF and the rest of the bunch are unwilling to not just do anything about it, but to even speak out at all. I'm a SAF member, and I actually wrote to them about this several times, with no response. Ironically, the only gun rights org that has been consistently speaking out on this is the otherwise extremely right wing GOA. And recently, both NRA and SAF organizations have enthusiastically endorsed Jeff Sessions, which is a huge middle finger to anyone concerned about this law... That said, ACLU generally does get involved in cases which are centered on 2A, but involve other rights. So my hope is that they'd get involved in this as well, if a suitable case came up.
warmblood 10y ago
I see the ACLU as an organization that isn't blind to all constitutional entitlements, and I don't believe they have any responsibility to be that. I see them as particularly interested in civil rights defense for the powerless against the powerful and untouchable, who are particularly antagonistic at the moment. Firearms interests have their own highly influential advocacy already from more than one entity, so it puts this argument in the "all lives matter" category of flawed defenses.
- briandear 10y ago
  And the First Amendment is protected by powerful media litigation teams. Civil liberties don't have asterisks.
  - brewdad 10y ago
    A portion of the the First Amendment is protected by media litigators. It's got more than a few important protections that deserve defense. Besides, are you really complaining that there are too many organizations working to protect our civil liberties. Seems an odd complaint. If Second Amendment rights matter to you then, by all means, donate to the NRA or others fighting to protect that right. Doesn't mean the ACLU and others don't do important work as well.
    - morganvachon 10y ago
      I donate to a state-level 2nd Amendment rights organization, GeorgiaCarry.org, rather than the NRA. Why? Because GeorgiaCarry stands strongly against racial discrimination and is working hard to end Jim Crow era Georgia laws that to this day attempt to thwart non-white citizens voting and asserting their 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment rights. By contrast, the NRA has a consistent record of remaining silent on race issues when they intersect with 2nd Amendment challenges.
artmageddon 10y ago
The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right. They have stood up for 2A rights in the past, but compared to the NRA and other 2A advocates, they have very limited resources, so they let the NRA / et. al. handle them.
- chimeracoder 10y ago
  > The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right To be specific - they disagree with one specific SCOTUS ruling that is less than a decade old (DC v. Heller). They do agree with the pro-gun arguments put forth by US v. Miller. They have devoted (to my knowledge) no material resources towards fighting DC v. Heller despite their disagreement with it, and they explicitly leave most 2nd Amendment cases to other advocacy groups (namely the NRA) because those are much more well-funded and focused solely on the 2nd Amendment. The ACLU prefers to spend its much smaller and limited budget on cases which aren't really supported by many (if any) other advocacy groups. This seems to keep coming up, and it's a rather tiresome argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13511964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13511964
  - CWuestefeld 10y ago
    Actually, the NRA themselves didn't want pursue Heller in the SCOTUS. They are not an effective watchdog. They are, IMHO, far more interested in pursuing their own agenda, which only partially intersects with the right to self defense. More important to them, it seems, is acting as stooges for the GOP. I came to that conclusion after a local election in which the NRA endorsed the GOP candidate, who had a C rating, as I recall, while turning up their noses at his challenger who was an A. I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation. They can make a better case for donation when they're able to sow FUD about taking away our guns. Having a definitive answer to the question from Heller (and later McDonald, to get it incorporated under the 14th Amendment) impairs how much fear they can inspire in gun owners.
    - 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
pc86 10y ago
I am an ardent supporter of the individual right to gun ownership but you can't fault the ACLU for having a slightly different interpretation of 2A while still believing in the right. And has others have stated, I'd much rather have the ACLU focus on things like 1A, 4A, etc. Leave 2A to the NRA and other 2A-specific advocacy groups.
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  I'm not so sure of that. It may be that their willingness to look at 2A in a completely different framework, claiming that the meaning of "the people" is different in just this case, will eventually undermine their defense of the rest of the Bill of Rights as well.
  - refurb 10y ago
    Exactly. If they took a view that the right to free speech is a "collective" right, that would completely gut any value they provide.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mulmen 10y ago
While I value my second amendment rights I will not allow that to prevent me from supporting the ACLU. I also can't stomach supporting the NRA. It's a challenging position to be in because I do care about my rights but I'm not sure where to turn to support my second amendment rights specifically.
- qball 10y ago
  There are a few other groups that aren't as heavy on deep-South cultural baggage (https://www.saf.org/ https://www.saf.org/). Whether or not they're sufficiently dissociated is another matter entirely, though.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    For what it's worth, CCRKBA - which is essentially to SAF what NRA-ILA is to NRA (involves most the same people, in particular, Alan Gottlieb; but is a political campaigning counterpart to the non-profit) - endorsed Jeff Sessions. And how! http://www.ccrkba.org/call-your-senators-to-confirm-sessions-as-ag/?cat=11 http://www.ccrkba.org/call-your-senators-to-confirm-sessions... “Senate confirmation of Jeff Sessions as our next Attorney General will bring about much-needed change at the Department of Justice. Instead of promoting or defending schemes that impact law-abiding Americans, his track record shows that he will go after genuine criminals.” “The nation is in serious need of an attorney general who knows the difference between civil rights and criminal wrongs” For those who are aware of the track record of Sessions as attorney, the highlighted bit especially is appalling.
    - mulmen 10y ago
      This is the problem for me. I want an organization that will fight for my second amendment rights but that also isn't advancing a secondary agenda that I disagree with. I don't think my city's tax on gun and ammo sales is an effective or constitutional measure and I want to support organizations that will fight that type of measure. I did not support Obama's "common sense" ban on gun sales to people on the no-fly list because I don't believe the no-fly list itself is constitutional. I do want to take steps to reduce gun violence in America but my current choices on the political front are either ineffective and/or unconstitutional laws from the left or a complete unwillingness to even try from the right. I do not support Jeff Sessions for Attorney General because I think the entire bill of rights is valuable and applies to everyone and I don't think he will uphold it effectively.
__jal 10y ago
Keep in mind that there are actually many ACLUs - the national body, and a lot of local chapters. The chapters are pretty independent, and occasionally do things that I personally disagree with. The distinction is frequently omitted, and used to paint the national group with the sins of local ones, and vice-versa. And that's not the view of the national ACLU, at all. Perhaps they don't place the emphasis on it you'd like to see, but that's quite different than considering the 2nd "outside the scope".
qball 10y ago
Sure, but "not doing anything to improve the state of 2A" is not the same as "fighting to impose a degraded view of 2A". The ACLU has nothing to gain by promoting any particular 2A view, because that's the only right that's not universally a political sinkhole. The inconvenient truth is that all civil rights (that aren't gun rights) have opposition nearly everywhere in America. The only difference is incidentals- if you're in coastal California or urban New England, your subculture wants "hate speech" banned; whereas Arkansas has a more traditional version of obscenity (depictions of sex and promotion of other vices) it wants to eliminate. So civil rights (in the traditional sense) has no defenders in legislature or society at large. Gun rights, on the other hand, still do in many areas of the country (coastal California and urban New England are the two big exceptions, of course), and as such I can't fault the ACLU's 'default' stance on a right that's not universally contested.
- jMyles 10y ago
  > urban New England are the two big exceptions Been to Manchester, NH lately?
  - qball 10y ago
    I probably should have said 'Northeast' rather than 'urban New England' specifically. I mis-remembered; that area encompasses fewer states than I thought it did (and NH is a good counterexample- gun laws there are great, if I remember correctly). Anyways, in the Northeast, the states with less liberal gun laws (NY/MD/CT/Mass./NJ) also happen to contain most of that area's population, especially in the larger cities like NYC/Boston/Baltimore. NH is good, but it's a very small piece of that region.
village-idiot 10y ago
That's like castigating someone who volunteers at a soup kitchen for not volunteering at every soup kitchen.
- jMyles 10y ago
  It's more like, in a world with exactly eight soup kitchens, the "soup kitchen support union" specifically excluding one from its support network and issuing a statement that, despite its soup having similar origins and ingredients, doesn't qualify as soup in to today's palette unless consumed collectively by all of society.
  - Arizhel 10y ago
    I don't see the problem there, when that one particular soup kitchen, for various reasons, has several other support unions which are dedicated exclusively to supporting that soup kitchen, and ignore all the other ones. It makes perfect sense that the "soup kitchen support union" would then concentrate all their efforts on the other 7 soup kitchens which don't get nearly as much support.
  - Chinjut 10y ago
    They're not the American Bill of Rights Union. They have a conception of what "civil liberties" amounts to which many sympathize with, and they fight for that. If you think they do good work in that arena, great! If you think they do good work in that arena and others do good work elsewhere, hey, you know what? That's still great! (And if you think they do poor work, or work on the wrong goals or whatever, well, of course that's your prerogative.)
  - village-idiot 10y ago
    You're stretching the metaphor beyond its breaking point. There's no limit on the number of civil rights organizations out there; the ACLU does not have any exclusive right to sue over certain issues or coordinate other groups, it's just particularly old, effective, and respected. If you're particularly worried about the 2nd amendment there are organizations (extremely powerful and effective organizations at that) to sue on your behalf.
Yhippa 10y ago
Hasn't the NRA cornered the market on the 2nd Amendment defenses bigly?

by jMyles 10y ago

m3rc 10y ago

What? This is a giant [citation needed]

throwaway76543 10y ago
Right here: https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment It's well established that the ACLU refuses to defend the individual civil right to armed self defense.
- m3rc 10y ago
  That all seems pretty clear to me. It's not up to you to interpret the 2nd Amendment for them. Not to mention that orgs like the NRA have many times more funding than the ACLU and dedicate every action to that one issue. Or the fact that you're dealing with a organization that has been one of the biggest and best defenders of oppressed groups in recent history and you're cranky that they're not gonna help you own a handgun like most of congress is.
  - throwaway76543 10y ago
    Friend, you're having an argument with yourself. I didn't say anything related to any of that. You asked for a cite, I linked you one. That's it.
    - pc86 10y ago
      Any time I read "friend" in this context I feel like you can replace it with just about any word someone wouldn't say in any professional context, and it's more true to the intent.
      - bostonpete 10y ago
        I ain't your friend, pal.
      - throwaway76543 10y ago
        We're in quite a pickle if de-escalating language is interpreted as rude. Please take this in the manner it was intended: Avoiding an unnecessary argument.
  - stale2002 10y ago
    I am cranky that they aren't willing to make simple statements of support for it. If an organization that was instrumental in protecting your right to a fair and speedy trial, was against opposed to the idea of free speech, I would still condemn that org for holding that specific position, while still recognizing that they have done good in other areas.

fisherjeff 10y ago

I think their reasoning on 2nd amendment work is sound. The NRA and affiliates have ~4x the ACLU's budget to spend on that one single issue, and they have shown themselves to be ruthlessly effective on that front.

jMyles 10y ago
But that's not really the point. SSDP and DPA, as specialized, wide-reaching, grassroots organizations, are more effective at drug policy reform, but this doesn't stop the ACLU from recognizing the threats that drug prohibition poses to civil liberties. Similarly, the fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making statements in favor of advances in the rights guaranteed by the second amendment.

thecyborganizer 10y ago

The 2nd amendment has the second largest lobbying organization in the country looking out for it. It doesn't need help from the ACLU.

CWuestefeld 10y ago
> the second largest lobbying organization in the country I don't think the National Association of Realtors has a dog in this race. [1] http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php http://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/lobbying-groups-gop_n_7130040.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/23/lobbying-groups-gop...
jMyles 10y ago
The fact that there are larger and more specialized organizations doesn't prevent the ACLU from making a simple statement in favor of advances in this particular civil liberty.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Their position is not simple, but they have a statement: https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment
  - jMyles 10y ago
    That's the document to which I was referring initially. And it definitely reads with a contrived voice, in contrast to most other ACLU lit.
int_19h 10y ago
There are some aspects where 2A intersects with other rights, where NRA and others are unwilling to go. One sticking point right now is drugs. Per federal law, any "user of an unlawful substance" is prohibited from firearm ownership, period. This includes anyone in states that legalized marijuana, including medical users. And the feds have been trying to maintain state records for medical marijuana card holders. NRA, SAF and the rest of the bunch are unwilling to not just do anything about it, but to even speak out at all. I'm a SAF member, and I actually wrote to them about this several times, with no response. Ironically, the only gun rights org that has been consistently speaking out on this is the otherwise extremely right wing GOA. And recently, both NRA and SAF organizations have enthusiastically endorsed Jeff Sessions, which is a huge middle finger to anyone concerned about this law... That said, ACLU generally does get involved in cases which are centered on 2A, but involve other rights. So my hope is that they'd get involved in this as well, if a suitable case came up.

warmblood 10y ago

I see the ACLU as an organization that isn't blind to all constitutional entitlements, and I don't believe they have any responsibility to be that. I see them as particularly interested in civil rights defense for the powerless against the powerful and untouchable, who are particularly antagonistic at the moment. Firearms interests have their own highly influential advocacy already from more than one entity, so it puts this argument in the "all lives matter" category of flawed defenses.

briandear 10y ago
And the First Amendment is protected by powerful media litigation teams. Civil liberties don't have asterisks.
- brewdad 10y ago
  A portion of the the First Amendment is protected by media litigators. It's got more than a few important protections that deserve defense. Besides, are you really complaining that there are too many organizations working to protect our civil liberties. Seems an odd complaint. If Second Amendment rights matter to you then, by all means, donate to the NRA or others fighting to protect that right. Doesn't mean the ACLU and others don't do important work as well.
  - morganvachon 10y ago
    I donate to a state-level 2nd Amendment rights organization, GeorgiaCarry.org, rather than the NRA. Why? Because GeorgiaCarry stands strongly against racial discrimination and is working hard to end Jim Crow era Georgia laws that to this day attempt to thwart non-white citizens voting and asserting their 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment rights. By contrast, the NRA has a consistent record of remaining silent on race issues when they intersect with 2nd Amendment challenges.

artmageddon 10y ago

The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right. They have stood up for 2A rights in the past, but compared to the NRA and other 2A advocates, they have very limited resources, so they let the NRA / et. al. handle them.

chimeracoder 10y ago
> The ACLU doesn't have a problem with 2A, but they see gun ownership as a collective right rather than an individual right To be specific - they disagree with one specific SCOTUS ruling that is less than a decade old (DC v. Heller). They do agree with the pro-gun arguments put forth by US v. Miller. They have devoted (to my knowledge) no material resources towards fighting DC v. Heller despite their disagreement with it, and they explicitly leave most 2nd Amendment cases to other advocacy groups (namely the NRA) because those are much more well-funded and focused solely on the 2nd Amendment. The ACLU prefers to spend its much smaller and limited budget on cases which aren't really supported by many (if any) other advocacy groups. This seems to keep coming up, and it's a rather tiresome argument: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13511964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13511964
- CWuestefeld 10y ago
  Actually, the NRA themselves didn't want pursue Heller in the SCOTUS. They are not an effective watchdog. They are, IMHO, far more interested in pursuing their own agenda, which only partially intersects with the right to self defense. More important to them, it seems, is acting as stooges for the GOP. I came to that conclusion after a local election in which the NRA endorsed the GOP candidate, who had a C rating, as I recall, while turning up their noses at his challenger who was an A. I believe that their reticence to litigate Heller was for their own self-preservation. They can make a better case for donation when they're able to sow FUD about taking away our guns. Having a definitive answer to the question from Heller (and later McDonald, to get it incorporated under the 14th Amendment) impairs how much fear they can inspire in gun owners.
  - 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

pc86 10y ago

I am an ardent supporter of the individual right to gun ownership but you can't fault the ACLU for having a slightly different interpretation of 2A while still believing in the right. And has others have stated, I'd much rather have the ACLU focus on things like 1A, 4A, etc. Leave 2A to the NRA and other 2A-specific advocacy groups.

CWuestefeld 10y ago
I'm not so sure of that. It may be that their willingness to look at 2A in a completely different framework, claiming that the meaning of "the people" is different in just this case, will eventually undermine their defense of the rest of the Bill of Rights as well.
- refurb 10y ago
  Exactly. If they took a view that the right to free speech is a "collective" right, that would completely gut any value they provide.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mulmen 10y ago

While I value my second amendment rights I will not allow that to prevent me from supporting the ACLU. I also can't stomach supporting the NRA. It's a challenging position to be in because I do care about my rights but I'm not sure where to turn to support my second amendment rights specifically.

qball 10y ago
There are a few other groups that aren't as heavy on deep-South cultural baggage (https://www.saf.org/ https://www.saf.org/). Whether or not they're sufficiently dissociated is another matter entirely, though.
- int_19h 10y ago
  For what it's worth, CCRKBA - which is essentially to SAF what NRA-ILA is to NRA (involves most the same people, in particular, Alan Gottlieb; but is a political campaigning counterpart to the non-profit) - endorsed Jeff Sessions. And how! http://www.ccrkba.org/call-your-senators-to-confirm-sessions-as-ag/?cat=11 http://www.ccrkba.org/call-your-senators-to-confirm-sessions... “Senate confirmation of Jeff Sessions as our next Attorney General will bring about much-needed change at the Department of Justice. Instead of promoting or defending schemes that impact law-abiding Americans, his track record shows that he will go after genuine criminals.” “The nation is in serious need of an attorney general who knows the difference between civil rights and criminal wrongs” For those who are aware of the track record of Sessions as attorney, the highlighted bit especially is appalling.
  - mulmen 10y ago
    This is the problem for me. I want an organization that will fight for my second amendment rights but that also isn't advancing a secondary agenda that I disagree with. I don't think my city's tax on gun and ammo sales is an effective or constitutional measure and I want to support organizations that will fight that type of measure. I did not support Obama's "common sense" ban on gun sales to people on the no-fly list because I don't believe the no-fly list itself is constitutional. I do want to take steps to reduce gun violence in America but my current choices on the political front are either ineffective and/or unconstitutional laws from the left or a complete unwillingness to even try from the right. I do not support Jeff Sessions for Attorney General because I think the entire bill of rights is valuable and applies to everyone and I don't think he will uphold it effectively.

__jal 10y ago

Keep in mind that there are actually many ACLUs - the national body, and a lot of local chapters. The chapters are pretty independent, and occasionally do things that I personally disagree with. The distinction is frequently omitted, and used to paint the national group with the sins of local ones, and vice-versa. And that's not the view of the national ACLU, at all. Perhaps they don't place the emphasis on it you'd like to see, but that's quite different than considering the 2nd "outside the scope".

qball 10y ago

Sure, but "not doing anything to improve the state of 2A" is not the same as "fighting to impose a degraded view of 2A". The ACLU has nothing to gain by promoting any particular 2A view, because that's the only right that's not universally a political sinkhole. The inconvenient truth is that all civil rights (that aren't gun rights) have opposition nearly everywhere in America. The only difference is incidentals- if you're in coastal California or urban New England, your subculture wants "hate speech" banned; whereas Arkansas has a more traditional version of obscenity (depictions of sex and promotion of other vices) it wants to eliminate. So civil rights (in the traditional sense) has no defenders in legislature or society at large. Gun rights, on the other hand, still do in many areas of the country (coastal California and urban New England are the two big exceptions, of course), and as such I can't fault the ACLU's 'default' stance on a right that's not universally contested.

jMyles 10y ago
> urban New England are the two big exceptions Been to Manchester, NH lately?
- qball 10y ago
  I probably should have said 'Northeast' rather than 'urban New England' specifically. I mis-remembered; that area encompasses fewer states than I thought it did (and NH is a good counterexample- gun laws there are great, if I remember correctly). Anyways, in the Northeast, the states with less liberal gun laws (NY/MD/CT/Mass./NJ) also happen to contain most of that area's population, especially in the larger cities like NYC/Boston/Baltimore. NH is good, but it's a very small piece of that region.

village-idiot 10y ago

That's like castigating someone who volunteers at a soup kitchen for not volunteering at every soup kitchen.

jMyles 10y ago
It's more like, in a world with exactly eight soup kitchens, the "soup kitchen support union" specifically excluding one from its support network and issuing a statement that, despite its soup having similar origins and ingredients, doesn't qualify as soup in to today's palette unless consumed collectively by all of society.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  I don't see the problem there, when that one particular soup kitchen, for various reasons, has several other support unions which are dedicated exclusively to supporting that soup kitchen, and ignore all the other ones. It makes perfect sense that the "soup kitchen support union" would then concentrate all their efforts on the other 7 soup kitchens which don't get nearly as much support.
- Chinjut 10y ago
  They're not the American Bill of Rights Union. They have a conception of what "civil liberties" amounts to which many sympathize with, and they fight for that. If you think they do good work in that arena, great! If you think they do good work in that arena and others do good work elsewhere, hey, you know what? That's still great! (And if you think they do poor work, or work on the wrong goals or whatever, well, of course that's your prerogative.)
- village-idiot 10y ago
  You're stretching the metaphor beyond its breaking point. There's no limit on the number of civil rights organizations out there; the ACLU does not have any exclusive right to sue over certain issues or coordinate other groups, it's just particularly old, effective, and respected. If you're particularly worried about the 2nd amendment there are organizations (extremely powerful and effective organizations at that) to sue on your behalf.

Yhippa 10y ago

Hasn't the NRA cornered the market on the 2nd Amendment defenses bigly?