Do you believe the Bill of Rights is outdated and should be either dropped in its entirety or at least rewritten?

There's always room for interpretation.

The idea that the bill of rights is "outdated" is as sheepish as it is moronic. The point of this country, in my own humble opinion, is that no one else can "decide" what I have a need for. It is a ridiculous idea that simply because one group of people thinks another group doesn't need the guns, that the other group should be disarmed. Next comes communism. Slipery slope logic, I know. However, that is what it will devolve into if you allow the american people to be disarmed. It starts with guns, then moves to taking away knives, clubs, and anything that could be used as a weapon. Then we are nothing but mindless lambs for the slaughter of what was once the greatest nation on the planet.

Someone needs a throatpunch, and its the sheeple of the millennial generation.

Not only do I think we need to leave the Bill of Rights as is, I believe any elected or appointed public official who seeks to violated it should automatically be disqualified to serve and be removed from the position they are serving in.

It's a good thing I'm not in or near a medical facility right now. They would have me restrained and sedated for extreme high blood pressure and emotional disturbance. My southern Christian upbringing and my respect for you and your service restrains my remarking upon your Goddaughters beliefs. I will leave it at that. God Bless the USA!

It looks like four down votes the question...not sure why, maybe they could explain?

The Bill of Rights was actually very well written. The Founders took great care to write everything so as to remain relevant and applicable for as long as they could manage. And a lot of people don't realize that the Bill of Rights does not GRANT rights, but rather RECOGNIZES them. If something is granted to you by the government, its not a right, its a privilege. The whole point of the Bill of Rights is to recognize and protect the people's natural rights, basically to tell government that these are untouchable so shut up and go away.

DISCLAIMER: I'm posting this without reading ANY other comments and posts, so it's five-months late, unfiltered by others' comments, untempered and straight-up. Sorry for the duplication and redundancies.

First... anyone who downvotes SOLELY because a question is asked needs an "old-school" Chicago Tune Up. Asking a question is NEVER to be discouraged. EVER!!!

Second... Bill of Rights Primer: The Bill of Rights GRANTS NOTHING!!!! It codifies the the rights INHERENT TO ALL MANKIND (slavery interpretation notwithstanding...) as specified in the Declaration of Independence. These 10 amendments were forced upon the original designers of the Constitution by anti-federalists (anti-government types, one could say) who won the argument that since these RESTRICTIONS ON GOVERNMENT were not specifically placed on the federal government, it was possible that a future government COULD restrict these activities/rights. Time has shown those "anti-government nut jobs" to be exactly correct.

Third... The First Amendment (like all the others in the Bill of Rights) DENIES THE GOVERNMENT THE POWER TO RESTRICT THE SPECIFIED PERSONAL ACTIVITIES. Since the protected activities in the first amendment are inherent to all persons, endowed by their Creator (God or Nature... doesn't matter), they can't be infringed upon by any government at any time, regardless of how gentle we think the government is/has become.

Fourth... The Second Amendment was placed into the mix by people who were ENGAGED IN A WAR AGAINST TYRANNY as a REMINDER and a WARNING that only the PEOPLE can decide whether or not their rights - as specified in the First Amendment - are being threatened.

Fifth... Naw. That's enough. If you can't get past the "but why?" purposes of the first two amendments in the context of limitations on government power, you have NO CHANCE of grasping the rest.

Read the Federalist Papers and the Anti-Federalist Papers. You'll understand the concepts and those concepts HAVEN'T CHANGED ONE BIT, regardless of how "advanced" we think we've become as a society.

Thus endeth the lesson...

You have to be kidding right? The constitution and the Bill of Rights are there to protect the minority against the Mob. It is obvious that your history teachers were out of Columbia or Berkley! This is at the very least treasonable to be evening thinking of litigating the tenets of the foundations of the Rules of Laws that separate us from every other banana republic. Dropping the first and second amendments are akin to the grabbing of every other right. It keeps the legislators in check and opens the door for actual debate and reason, but when you take away freedom of speech like they did in old century Europe one was subject to the King. John Locke and others thought to challenge the legitimacy of the Kings Rule by finding legitimacy in the voice of the people being so represented. Have you actually read the constitution to think you want to go back to such a archaic debate?

I choose leave it as is but I do feel we need to take an honest look at the Constitution as a whole. In my opinion we did a great job as the world's first modern democracy and our Constitution and Republic have many great aspects. However, to say that our Constitution is still the best today is like saying that the Model T is still the best car. Times have changed both domestically and internationally and our government/constitution has not kept up. As far as I know we are the only modern nation-state to not completely overhaul our government and constitution in the last 100 years or so (Great Britain might be in there too but I don't think they even have a written constitution). As far as the 2nd Amendment goes, keep it. If we overhaul the whole thing, make it much more clear about its purpose - to resist tyrannical government.

CMDCM Gene Treants Master Chief, I don't think that your poll encompassed the complexity of the question. The good thing about the Constitution and it's amendment process is that each of the so-called bills of the Bill of Rights stand alone in and of themselves. The first 10 amendments--colloquially referred to as the Bill of Rights--retain that titles mostly honorarily; in fact, the actual piece of paper that the National Archives possesses has 12 articles on them--10 of which were adopted in the 1780s, one of which wasn't adopted until the 1990s, and another that was not adopted at all--and the one's that are now a part of the Constitution appear in a different order than we know them today.

Now, with all of that said, I don't see how you can suggest that the First Amendment discriminates against atheists and agnostics. The article reads: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment on religion nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Meaning, that the gov't cannot make an official religion, nor tell you which one you can or cannot practice--if you choose to do so at all. There is something to be said that historically, atheists and agnostics were socially marginalized, and in some places in the country and in a number of ways, some might say that they are. But really, from a governing and political perspective, it's religious people who are actually pushed out more frequently, and in the social spectrum, too, religious people are being pushed out.

As for the Second Amendment, it's incredibly difficult to discern what the Founders meant regarding gun ownership. Fortunately, that's not actually the question at hand in front of the Supreme Court, ever. They evaluate the law and make their rulings based on that. Does the Second Amendment need to be changed to allow for more effective gun control? I would say "yes." My reason is more long winded than I have even been so far, but suffice it to say, I am of the mind that law enforcement is capable of stopping a certain amount of gun crime if there were better legal avenues for them to do so--avenues which are currently blocked by the current wording of the Constitution.