Constitutional Confusion

While my coworkers and I were discussing the previous post, one of them remarked that no one should be allowed to own any gun that the police do not own. I told him I was fine with that, because the police own machine guns, tanks, and rocket launchers. He said no, he meant what the average officer on the street has. He then gave the standard line about the constitution being out of date.

When I pointed out that his opinion would apply to the other amendments as well, and asked him to tell me how he felt about that, he told me that the Constitution was unneeded in this day and age, and he felt that too many people "hid" behind the constitution. He thinks that society is falling apart because we let people have too much freedom, and they abuse it.

He used Child pornography as an example. He said that under the First Amendment, child porn would be legal. I told him that if I want to write stories about children in those situations, that would be protected speech, however repugnant it may be. When a child porn FILM is made, you would be prosecuted. Not for a speech crime, but for having sex with minors. The speech is protected, the act is not. That is like saying a book about bank robberies is legal, but robbing one isn't.

He ranted on about how it should be illegal to slander the President (citing the TV show "Lil Bush") and how we should eliminate the separation of church and state, so that we can declare Christianity the national religion, thus preventing Muslims from taking over the world.

People scare and amaze me at the same time.