Just out of curiosity the other day I went on the ACLU website. Let me quote for you what it deemed their mission statement to be as set forth on its home page:

"The ACLU is our nation’s guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country."

It then goes on to enumerate some of these Constitution rights, such as the First Amendment, equal protection, due process, etc. But it is obvious from current debates (from which the ACLU is notably absent) that they pick and choose its constitutional rights. Apparently, a constitutional right is only important if deemed so by the ACLU.

What I am talking about now is the complete lack of comment or activity of the ACLU in the current debate concerning the right to own firearms, as protected by the Constitution’s Second Amendment. The ACLU touts itself as being a staunch defender of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. The Bill of Rights is the first 10 amendments to it, and supposedly the ACLU finds these rights sacrosanct.

But for the ACLU apparently the Bill of Rights has only nine amendments. For some reason the Second Amendment is completely ignored or not mentioned; the ACLU just try to brush it under the carpet.

We have all seen the headlines over the years about the great lengths to which it will go to protect the constitutional rights as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. It will go so far as to run into court to get an injunction so that a group of Nazis or KKK members can hold a rally in a public square. This is the freedom of assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment, at least according to the ACLU.

It loves the Fourth and Fifth Amendments as well. If the police find evidence to tie a perpetrator to a heinous crime, if the ACLU does not like how that evidence was gathered it will intercede to see to it that a jury does not hear it. If a murderer holding a dripping knife and confesses to the crime, but the ACLU doesn’t like how the Miranda rights were read, it will do everything in their power to see to it that the criminal goes free. This is the mission of the ACLU – to protect the freedoms promised in the first 10 amendments of the Constitution.

But where are they when it comes to the freedom guaranteed by the Second Amendment? The Supreme Court of the United States recently held in the Heller case that the Second Amendment guarantees the individual the right to reasonable ownership of a firearm. The State of Maryland just imposed Draconian restrictions against that right, which many people feel to be in violation of the Second Amendment as interpreted in the Heller case.

Where is the ACLU? If Maryland had done something to restrict the freedoms granted under the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, the Eighth Amendment or any of their other "pet" amendments, it would have held rallies in Annapolis, purchased media time, and – in short – done everything in its power to stop the legislation.

But did we hear anything from them when this state eviscerated our Constitutional right to own a handgun? I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard a thing.

There is something else noteworthy on the ACLU website. I guess it knows it can’t just ignore the Second Amendment, since it was passed as part of the Bill of Rights shortly after the ratification of the Constitution in 1787. In short the ACLU dons judges’ robes and says that the Supreme Court is wrong in its holding in the Heller case. Never mind that it is the law of the land. If the ACLU says it’s wrong it must be wrong.

In short the ACLU says that the Second Amendment "protects a collective right rather than an individual right." What in the world does that mean? If anything, the Bill of Rights is designed to protect the individual against the excess of government. It is not designed to protect government from the actions of the individual. When the ACLU uses words like "collective" to describe our sacred and inherent Constitutional rights, it makes me shudder, as the last time I heard the word "collective" used in the context of government was concerning the agricultural practices in the former Soviet Union.

In short, hypocrisy takes many forms. When smug, know-it-all liberal organizations profess that its view of the law of the land is more valid than that of our court system, we should take notice. When it decides that it is the sole arbiters of what Constitutional rights are important and what are not, we should grow a little fearful.

And when it gets in bed with liberal politicians in seeking to destroy the very Constitutional rights it otherwise state it will defend, we should grow angry.

That’s where I am on this.