Thats because you are a very litigious country (73% of the worlds lawyers)

@273kelvin it's a fact.

g

Again "No desire" I merely used that part of the constitution as something that may with hindsight be wrong. There is an old joke about someone asking for directions in Ireland. "Well if I were you? I would not have started from here." If I lived in the US I probably would own a gun. I would not want to or like to but I would deem it a necessary evil. Then again I do not start from there.

As for jews being armed in 30s Germany. The same gun laws existed then in the US as now. It did not stop lynchings in the south. Also by the same logic it would have been handy for the sioux to have had nuclear weapons.

Perhaps ethics may be a better word but morals is the one chosen by theists, so that is what I used. We as non-believers have our own moral code, undefined by dogma. You may call it ethics if you wish but the results are the same. The members of this site who voted in my poll did so on what they described as moral grounds.

@273kelvin The words are used as synonymous but they are not.
Moral is based on a universal sense of truth.
Ethics is based on what gives good results.
In the end is the discussion between utilitarianism and deontology,
Moral is deontologist it claims to know what is right and will do it whatever the results, and will never change
Ethics is utilitarian, it has an objective and will act in the way of achieving it, and will change if it demonstrates inefficient.

@Pedrohbds By your definition euthanasia, eugenics, and capital punishment are all ethically sound and efficient ways to go. If someone is unemployed for a period of time, a residual offender or a drain on society by being old or infirm. Then off to the soylent green farm they go. Morally we take the view that life whilst not being sacred is precious and cannot be taken for convenience sake.

@273kelvin
No it is not true, this is a scarecrow argument against utilitarianism.
One can argue that what is the point of building a society of abundance if you are always afraid of being considered deviant and be casted out by those mechanisms you cited?
As I argued in the linked post, if you are to base your society in human rights, and the objective is to expand them, you can use utilitarianism for that.
You restrain your natural right to fight (and even kill) to get something that you want, for maximizing the human rights of property, dignity, life, not be harmed etc.
This way of thinking is the right use of utilitarian tools.
You must first foresee where you want to go. That is what society votes when they build a constitution. The constitution is the society view, the laws, codes and regulations are the tools and the rules that limit our natural freedoms (for example use all your resources freely against give some part to the state in the shape of taxes) in the name of achieving the desired society described on the constitution.

@Pedrohbds The first part of your comment is almost de facto the case. Over 1% of the US population is under lock and key and felons are disenfranchised upon release. Would it not be ethically more efficient to implement a final solution?
Human rights are unalienable therefore a moral rather than (in your definition) an ethical concept..As is a written constitution.
If as you claim we act in our own long term interests by only adopting laws and rules that limit freedoms that will benefit us all as a whole? How do explain the abolition of slavery in the UK and empire in the 1830s? As the 1st major power to do this (a generation before the land of the free). This was not in our best interests economically, far from it. Yet moral arguments thankfully won the day. Lincoln of course had a war to win and therefore other justifications.

@273kelvin at the point you consider the enslaved people as people... The criminals are the enslavers. You don't need a economical argument. The argument is if you don't like to be a slave, there should be no man enslaved.

@Pedrohbds But at the time and for quite some time before. They were not counted as people but property. Even the US constitution counts them as 3/5 of a person in its census and native americans not at all as they were not human till much later.

@273kelvin
Yes, correct, they were not seen officially as people, but when other people start seeing them as equal humans, enslavement becomes unacceptable, and the abolitionist movements start.
@TheMiddleWay
But when we talk about state and relations citizen to citizen, we can't impose morality, but we can demand ethics. So Morality you keep for your inner circle or for your own conduct, but you can demand ethics (at least the average consensus ethics) from others.

@Pedrohbds Seeing them as people (they were not at 1st viewed as equal) was a moral judgment, not an ethical one. Society had more to lose than gain by this.

@Pedrohbds, @TheMiddleWay I suppose this is more morals the ethics.
A boy asks his father "Dad what are business ethics?"
"I am glad you asked that son. Let me put it this way. A lady comes into my shop and buys something for $20, hands me the note then walks quickly out. When I get to the till I find that its 2 20s stuck together. I then you have a question of business ethics"
"What should you run after her and give her the $20 back?"
"No do I tell my partner?"

@273kelvin ok no equal, but minimally human to deserve to not be enslaved.

@Pedrohbds Obviously I am not arguing in favor of slavery, thats a given but its a given in our time. If you look at the 1830s there was no economic or shared experiences that drove this. It was a purley moral standpoint. Similar to animal rights protesters today.