Monday, March 11, 2013

Original Intent

When discussing the 2nd Amendment to the US constitution, I often hear people say "the framers didn't intend for people to own AR-15's when they wrote that".  I think that's quite true.  Since none of the people who drafted or signed the constitution were fortune-tellers or wizards with the ability to see into the future, there is a lot of modern inventions I'm sure they didn't foresee.  But oddly enough, the people who argue this regarding firearms ownership don't seem to carry the argument on to the rest of the bill of rights.  Have you ever heard someone argue that freedom of speech doesn't cover text messages, television or social media because the founders didn't envision computers and broadcast signals when they wrote the first amendment?  Of course you haven't because that would be ludicrous.

Technology advances and the law has to keep up.  There was a day where there was no such thing as voice recorders or cameras.  Does that mean that evidence gathered by either shouldn't be allowed in court?  Of course not.  Singling out technological advances on the topic of firearms while suggesting the law should evolve in other spaces with technology does not follow logic.  It's not a valid argument, or an argument made by a person who grasps logical concepts.

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