So why do they skip the 2nd Amendment?
First, they claim it's not an individual right. Apparently the phrase "the right of the people", as used in the 2nd amendment, means something totally different from what it means throughout the rest of the Bill of Rights. Their "belief" that the right to keep & bear arms is a collective one - not an individual right, runs contrary to the direct wording of the bill of rights and contrary to several Supreme Court cases that have established the 2A as an individual right.
So they bury their heads in the sand and ignore history and scholarship when it threatens their dearly held ideology. But it gets better.
Next, they claim the 2nd Amendment is irrelevant to modern society because it would require far more powerful weapons for the people to establish their freedom & security from a central government. Even if this were true, it would be irrelevant to the question whether the 2A is an individual right. And it's not even true. History gives us numerous examples of people and unorganized militias holding their own against far superior forces for years or decades.
Indeed, if this true - armed citizens are no match for a centralized government - why is the very first thing every dictator centralizing and concentrating government power does, is disarm the citizens?
Thomas Jefferson said it well:
When the people fear the government, it is tyranny.
When the government fears the people, it is liberty.
The people at the ACLU are too smart to be ignorant of history, so they must be intentionally ignoring it.
Of course, they never mention the obvious point that self defense is the most basic and primary human right, without which all others mean nothing. This is rather curious, since the ACLU often claims to be dedicated to human rights. But let's not allow a little hypocrisy get in the way of ideology. As our founders knew well, the right to self defense is not granted or bestowed by any government. It exists a priori and self evidently in all people. The Bill of Rights doesn't grant or bestow this right, it only requires the government to recognize it.
Barring people the use of arms, which is the primary means of self defense, is to violate this basic human right. Indeed, what would the 1st Amendment freedom of expression mean if the government banned the use of printing presses?
It's rather amusing to see how flagrantly the ACLU thwarts the constitution in whatever direction suits their personal politics. When it doesn't go far enough they stretch the meaning beyond its original wording and intent. For example, to claim the 1st amendment protects public displays of flag burning, pornography and obscenity. I could accept that as principled philosophical consistency if they applied it to all civil rights. But for other rights they do the opposite and interpret it so narrowly and restricted as to totally undermine it.
All this only proves how the ACLU holds their left wing ideology more dearly than their principles. I could respect them (even if not agree with them) as a consistent ideological interest group, except that their attitude suggests they expect a halo for the ideological zealotry they attempt to pass off as informed scholarship.