>The same ACLU is a strong Second Amendment supporter.

Could you tell me specifically what definition of "strong supporter" you're using here? I can't think of any reasonable one that would make your claim true. Supporter, maybe.

But a "strong supporter" is not someone who endorses a watered down version of the Second Amendment, and then spends zero effort defending infringements of that.

Disagreeing with your interpretation of the Second Amendment does not mean they do not support civil rights. Nor does spending their money and time defending civil rights that don't have massive organizations devoted to defending them.

Yeah, I get that the ACLU's actions regarding the 2nd Amendment are defensible.

That wasn't the topic.

The topic was the claim that the ACLU is a "strong supporter" of the second amendment. Do you know a definition of "strong supporter" that is appropriate for the ACLU's actions regarding the Second Amendment?

No, I don't want to hear about how great the ACLU is.

No, I don't want to hear about the ACLU really does support civil rights.

No, I don't want to hear about how their position on the 2nd amendment is reasonable.

No, I don't want to hear about all the other people who can protect the second amendment.

I want something responsive to my question: in what sense is the ACLU not just a "supporter" but a "strong supporter" of the Second Amendment?

Don't have anything to say about that? Then please stay out of the discussion rather than changing topics and blurring the issues. Thanks.

>Don't have anything to say about that? Then please stay out of the discussion rather than changing topics and blurring the issues. Thanks.

The topic of this thread is actually that we have a lot of people serving life in prison for non-violent crimes.

Your post is now 8ish levels deep and asking people to prove that the ACLU is a strong supporter of 2nd amendment rights.

This seems like a pretty big topic change and blurring of the issues.

I think they're a strong supporter of the Second Amendment as per the way they interpret it; they have filed a number of briefs in support of cases that fit their definition.

Let's stop with the farce: your complaint is that you don't like their interpretation, and so you choose to change the topic and blur the issue on a completely different thread to grind that ax of yours.

No, my complaint is that there's a difference between "supporter" and "strong supporter", and that if the latter is to have any meaning at all, the ACLU doesn't meet it.

How do you differentiate a "supporter" from a "strong supporter"? If I firmly believed that the First Amendment only protects pro-government speech, and filed the occasional legal brief in defense of those prosecuted under this interpretation, would that make me a "strong supporter" of the First Amendment? Would you talk about how crazy wicked cool it is that a nutty right-winger like me paradoxically has a thing for protecting the first amendment?

Or, to avoid the issue of weak interpretations of amendments, how about if I had the "normal" 1st amendment views, and had a "pro-Bill of Rights" group that spent only a token amount of effort protecting infringements on speech (or the other 1A stuff), and never to represent any such client? Still a "strong" supporter? Or just a "supporter"?

In a smaller example, the ACLU recently supported my father-in-law's small church in its suit against a local government ordinance restricting their ability to pass out literature on public sidewalks. Religious proselytizing usually falls more under the domain of the right than the left.

People sometimes like to paint their side as "for freedom" and the other side as "wants to restrict you", but the reality is far more complicated, changing issue-by-issue and occasionally covering legitimate tradeoffs where both sides might be considered "for freedom".