The Absoluteness of Rights
An interesting observation about the United States Constitution: as it is written, the right to bear arms is conspicuously more strongly protected than the right to free speech (and the several other rights protected in the First Amendment). The statement on Free Speech is, in its essence:
Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech….
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
While the statement on bearing arms is:
[T]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
The Second Amendment prohibition on infringement is absolute. This right shall not be infringed. The First Amendment prohibition simply states that the Federal Congress can not pass a law infringing free speech (or religion, etc.). In theory, an individual state could pass the Shut the Hell Up Act of 2005 and the Federal Government would have no legal issue with that; but a state passing a ban on personal arms would run afoul of the Second Amendment.
Perhaps the blunt strength of the Second Amendment was designed in such a way because the founding fathers recognized that this fundamental right protects all of our other rights.
(Of course, our sophisticated, nuanced court system has seen fit to read all kinds of exceptions and loopholes into that single straightforward sentence — I’m just talking about what’s actually written on the page.)
