Second Amendment Research Paper

The United States is a nation with a gun culture with a magnitude unseen in any other nation on the Earth. This gun culture stems from the second amendment in the Constitution that states citizens have the right to bear arms which many Americans interpret this to mean that they have the right to own and operate any firearm uninfringed by the government. The Second amendment in the United States Constitution should be revised to completely ban the possession and sale of firearms by people living within the United States because, of the multitude of mass shootings carried out with ease using guns, guns are no longer necessary for survival as they once were in earlier colonial times, and the lack of regulations on buying gun from unlicensed dealers

There are always people who want to bring harm to a group of people be it in the United States or in other countries in the world however, “everywhere else, that person rants in isolation or on his keyboard only in America do we cheerfully supply him with military-style weapons to express his rage”(Gopnik, The Second Amendment is a gun-control amendment). There will be no shortage of people who have an ideology ingrained so deeply within themselves they will desire to bring harm to people they view as opponents and/or threats to their ideology. However, supplying such mentally ill and unstable people with dangerous weapons allows them to act on behalf of their ideologies and feelings. Dangerous, high capacity weapons give these disgruntled individuals the opportunity to perform mass shootings in public locations such as schools, places of worship, shopping malls, movie theaters, etc. Such as, in the case of Dylann Roof the shooter of an African American church in South Carolina who was a white supremacist and was hoping to incite a race war within the United States by murdering multiple worshipers within the church. He was able to accomplish his heinous act with a high capacity assault weapon he easily and legally obtained in the United States due to extremely lax background checks

For minors “Exceptional lethality, combined with easy access, accounts at least in part for the fact that firearm-related injuries remain the second leading cause of death among children and youth ages 10 to 19”(Reich, Culross, Behrman; Children, Youth, and Gun Violence: Analysis and Recommendations). Guns have become an easily accessible not only for adults who can currently legally obtain them but also illegally by the nation's youth. Unlicensed and private vendors of guns are not required to ask for an ID or to perform a background check making it easy for a minor to obtain a gun because of irresponsible vendors. Minors are more often than not going to have little to no experience with correctly and responsibly operating a firearm making them not only a danger to others around them but also to themselves. With access to dangerous weapons at such an early age makes it easier for youth plotting a mass shooting to carry it out just like the teenagers who attacked Columbine High School in Colorado. Gun violence among youth is also very prevalent in low income and racially ethnic neighborhoods high in crime due to gangs that recruit teenagers and have them carrying guns around to defend their territory and do the bidding of the gang. This easy access of guns by youth