Regardless of one's position on the recall, it seems an odd thing for the N. Cal ACLU to be putting over 5% of it's operating budget into this campaign.
You know - perhaps like protests vs the City, or on public streets near the Federal Court.
This is true regardless of whether you look at the size of the government, relative to the economy or where it sits on the spectrum between ethno-nationalist vs self-criticism/openness to outsiders. The US has a much larger than average sized government spending vs the size of its economy and it takes in three times more immigrants per year than any other country.
By comparison, China, Japan, India and other major world powers are considerably further to the right. Even influential small countries such as Israel and Singapore are also a bit more conservative.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/immigrati...
How about most of Europe and Latin America?
It is hard to define what "left" means nowadays but it is telling that you believe the "size of the government", as defined by mostly military spending, can consist as a checkbox for being part of the left.
Be honest here.
None of the budgets of any governments mentioned are "defined by mostly military spending".
Even then, much of that military spending has been going towards the defense of allies that underinvest in their own defense.
Germany takes more and this is raw numbers not adjusted by the size of the country. Germany is less than a third the size of the US and taking more. Spain takes 60% as many immigrants as the US and is roughly 1/7 the population.
The link was right at the bottom of the comment and if you click it, you'll see data sources mentioned prominently.
As of 2020, the US has 50.6 million foreign born immigrants, while Germany, which was #2, had 15.8 million. Adjusted for current population it's fairly close. The UK, in contrast had 9.4M, and Spain 6.8M. All of these countries have immigrant populations compared to world averages.
You could nitpick at time frames or various other ways to slice the data but there's no defensible claim that the US accepts fewer immigrants than most countries.
0: https://www.iwf.org/2020/11/16/some-in-aclu-have-new-cause-b...
Something something paradox of tolerance
https://www.aclu.org/other/second-amendment
and don't seem to support the right to own a gun.
Re: redraft, I go back and forth. I think if we want to be textualists then we need a redraft because the founders couldn't possibly have envisioned the modern world. The idea of redrafting isn't that radical -- Thomas Jefferson wanted it [1].
But pragmatically, I don't think we'll ever redraft it. Both liberals and conservatives would have to agree to a redraft (they won't) and then agree on what the new draft would be (they won't). The only way to modernize the Constitution and Bill of Rights is to interpret it using a modern lens. "What would this document mean if it was written with today's world in mind?"
There’s an important word right there in the (extremely short) text of the amendment: “militia.” That word explains why the amendment exists in addition to the constitution’s mention of the army: it’s because army and militia are different things. We agree that the amendment very clearly is not referring to the right of the United States government to maintain an army, but I see no indication that the ACLU or any other significant groups believe that.
But it seems odd to me that the first 13 of the 27 words of the amendment would explain why militias are important, when a militia would be an extremely rare use case for owning a firearm.
OK, then where's that militia which is not an army but is a "collective" that is not composed of individuals owning, keeping and bearing arms? Which structure is it referring to? I can't find anything matching the description in the US (outside the army which we excluded, and the police, which doesn't fit either and isn't a federal business anyway). Moreover, I can't find anything matching the description anywhere in the world either - if we look at other countries that have people bearing arms outside the army - e.g. Switzerland - they keep and bear arms personally, not "collectively". So again, it looks odd - what exactly does this right mean? It again sounds like "it's not what you mean, you can't have the gun, it's 'collective'" - ok, so tell me, what does it mean then? Unlike many other concepts in the Constitution, this one seems pretty tough to figure out.
These definitions are abundantly clear in any good-faith conversation about gun policy. The ACLU in particular is quite clear about which policies they believe infringe on civil liberties and which do not. For instance, the ACLU's position is that laws which restrict the types of weapons or ammunitions which can be owned generally do not infringe on civil liberties, while laws which restrict categories of people from owning guns often do infringe on civil rights (the examples they give are immigrants and people with mental disabilities). Incidentally, the ACLU also believes that many current federal restrictions on gun ownership do infringe on civil liberties, like the prohibition of certain convicted criminals and people with mental disabilities when there is no indication of violent behavior.
How do I get the right permit or pass the certification exam, or whatever?
The US used to have state militias, but they morphed into the National Guard, which serves a different purpose.
Ok this is already an oddity. There's no second such right. I mean, the right for religious freedom does not require you to join a regulated religion (even if many do join organized religions). The right for free speech does not require you to be a journalist. The right for speedy trial does not require you to join a speedy trial club and pass regular legal training. And so on. This is what I'd call odd. But there's more.
> Obvious regulations that a militia might want to have are minimum age requirements, training requirements, equipment safety requirements (such as requiring owners to store and transport their guns safely and perform regular maintenance).
OK let's assume so. Note that most gun regulations in anti-gun states and cities have little to do with this - but let's assume that's what ACLU wants.
> For instance, the ACLU's position is that laws which restrict the types of weapons or ammunitions which can be owned generally do not infringe on civil liberties
How this follows? How "you can not own a gun with certain feature" fits with the above? Does this feature prevent training, or is particularly unsafe, or preclude safe transportation and storage? Not at the least. So how does it fit in this concept? It comes to the comical, that two models of the same gun, with small cosmetic change, may one be legal and another illegal in certain states (OK, let's not be coy, in California) - can anybody seriously argue that's because one can be used in militia and another can't? That's beyond odd, that makes no sense. I mean if we talked about guns that somehow useless to militia (don't know, let's assume you found an argument that specific type of a gun is so peculiar that no militia would ever have a reason to use it) - ok, I'm willing to accept that makes sense in that framework. But that's not how the regulations that ACLU supports and endorses work!
> while laws which restrict categories of people from owning guns often do infringe on civil rights
Again, how does it work? You named age restriction yourself. Isn't it "category of people"? But let's say we talk about people who are violently insane, or that are career felons, maybe violent gangsters who were imprisoned for many years for their crimes. You don't want such guys in your militia, probably, right? If you have them there, they'd probably loot everything instead of defending the fellow citizens, maybe? Yet it's absolutely "category of people". Let's take mental disabilities - of course, there is a whole gamut of disabilities, but in general you'd want your militia to be mentally stable, right? So how does it work? It looks again that the position does not even have internal consistency, that's even before anybody would start to attack it on merits of its principles! Again, that's a very odd position to hold.