Civil Liberties
American Government
October 22, 2012

Even though our country has always strove for individual freedoms and basic “inalienable rights,” we have always struggled to stay to true to that focus. We certainly have had issues with dispersing those rights equally, allowing some individuals, to experience more freedoms than others, such as minority groups and women. Though we have come a long way, and though I don’t think any of can expect perfection, we still need to be focusing on several issues that are currently threatening our civil liberties. As a nation we need to make sure every individual is enjoying the same civil liberties regardless of sex, race, age or sexual orientation. One of our granted civil liberties that I believe at least needs some renegotiating would be the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the right to keep and bear arms. I do not believe that the right for an individual to bear arms should completely be taken away, but as a nation I think it has become obvious that more regulations and restrictions should be put into place. It seems like every week now, the news is reporting another tragic shooting, and the number of casualties in these unfortunate situations seems to be getting higher and higher. Though I know the states retain the power to create the gun regulations, I feel like it may have come to a point where the federal government needs to step in and create more standardized regulations. I don’t feel like people need to own machine guns, or silencers or any automatic weapons in general. If people want a gun for self-protection a simple handgun should more than do the trick. If an individual is into hunting, they certainly don’t need an automatic weapon to take down their pray. Certain types of guns should be banned from the everyday citizen, such as machine guns. There should more uniform requirements to for an individual to own a gun, such as background checks, and once a person owns a gun(s) that person should be required to store the gun in a certain manner and they should definitely be required to have child safety lock on any guns they possess. I think that sacrificing some aspects of our right to bear arms would benefit our nation as a whole by decreasing certain types of gun violence. Rights of the accused is another area that in my opinion more individuals should be concerned with, especially after the events of 9/11. Though I know 9/11 was a scary time for us all, and that some individuals feel what the government did after that attack was necessary for the nation’s safety, I can’t help but chalk a lot of what the government did as more than taking advantage of a terrible situation. The passage of the USA Patriot Act, as it has been said by many individuals, was not a very smart move on Congress’s part. If there is a supposed line that cannot be crosses when trying to balance individual freedoms and national security, the passage of this act crossed that line. Now if an individual is a suspected terrorist, that individual can have his or her emails tracked, phone conversations recorded, and their internet activities followed. How are the citizens of this country okay with these facts? Especially when there is currently no exact guidelines on how to identify a terrorist because ANYONE could be a terrorist. The National Defense Authorization Act is another piece of legislature that has some disturbing provisions. This indefinite military detention portion of this act would allow the military to detain, without a trial, any American citizen accused of being a terrorist. It just reminds of the horrors that took place at Guantanamo Bay, where among other abuses; the individuals at that camp were deprived of many basic rights, such as the right to know the charges against them, the right to an attorney and the right for their cases to go to court. The justice system on the smaller scales has become abusive in certain circumstance