Americans Have the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Our rights as Americans started to take shape when the Constitution of the United States was drawn up by the delegates at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Three years later, a very important part of American history called the Bill of Rights was added. The Bill of Rights is looked upon and interpreted every day. It gives the citizens of the United States many of the rights and freedoms that we value today, and some of those are in jeopardy. One right that is at stake is our right to bear arms, which is addressed in the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment is a highly debatable topic, and many legal scholars and the Supreme Court have yet to resolve the issues and controversy dealing with the Amendment. Until a decision can be made, the law will remain as it is currently interpreted. The citizens of the United States of America have the right to keep and bear arms. The controversy about the Second Amendment is derived from how it is worded (Jordan). The debate about the wording can be broken into two different arguments. To understand the arguments it is important to know how the Amendment is worded. The Second Amendment states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed (qtd. in Anastaplo 61).” The first argument is that some people view the Second Amendment as two separate rights. The right of the people to keep and bear arms can be interpreted with the idea that each individual has the right to keep and bear arms; whereas, it could be a collective right giving just the members of the Militia the right to have guns (Gold). It is believed that the original meaning of the right to bear arms and the militia in the same Amendment was because in the early times of America the citizens needed weapons to guarantee their freedom and prevent the government from forming a dictatorship (Edel xi). The second debate is that the Amendment is one statement, therefore meaning that the militia has the right to bear arms. The problem of understanding the meaning of the Second Amendment has been brought before many courts all across America and has been ruled upon in different ways at different times. However, the Supreme Court has never declared it illegal to own guns. Over the years, t... ... middle of paper ... ...iminals would be able to get guns illegally if they wanted them (Smith 25). It comes down to the age old saying of “guns do not kill people, people kill people.” The ability to keep and bear arms is also a right given to the American people by the Bill of Rights and was reinstated when one of the framers, Thomas Jefferson, said, “No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms.” Works Cited Anastaplo, George. The Amendments to the Constitution: A Commentary. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1995. Chidsey, Donald Barr. The Birth of the Constitution: An Informed History. New York: Crown, 1964. Edel, Wilbur. Gun Control: Threat to Liberty or Defense Against Anarchy?. London: Praeger, 1995. Gold, Bruce. “The 2nd Amendment: A Historical Understanding.” Keep and Bear Arms.com. 5 April 2004 Hickok, Eugene W., ed. The Bill of Rights: Original Meaning and Current Understanding. Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1991. Jordan, Stan. “The Common Sense 2nd Amendment.” Keep and Bear Arms.com. 2001. 5 April 2004 Klein, Chuck. “What the Second Amendment Says.” The Cincinnati Enquirer 28 March 2001: B7. 5 April 2004 Smith, Guy. Gun Facts Version 2.0. 2000. 1 April 2004
Cornell, Saul. A Well-regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control in America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. Print.
The United State of America, established by the Founding Father who lead the American Revolution, accomplished many hardship in order to construct what America is today. As history established America’s future, the suffering the United State encountered through history illustrate America’s ability to identify mistakes and make changes to prevent the predictable. The 2nd Amendment was written by the Founding Father who had their rights to bear arms revoked when they believe rising up to their government was appropriate. The Twentieth Century, American’s are divided on the 2nd Amendment rights, “The right to bear arms.” To understand why the Founding Father written this Amendment, investigating the histories and current measures may help the American people gain a better understanding of gun’s rights in today’s America.
"A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
The way that an individual interprets the wording of the Second Amendment influences their point of view on who has the right to "keep and bear arms" (Amendment 2). The controversy brought on by the Second Amendment is because the Second Amendment does not clearly define whom "the people" are. This ambiguity has left room for action by legislative bodies and the courts to pass laws and make interpretations that influence the way this Amendment is applied and enforced. The Second Amendment says, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." (Amendment 2).
[4] Hickok, Eugene Jr., ed. The Bill of Rights: Original Meaning and Current Understanding. Virginia: University Press of Virginia, 1991
United States. Committee on the Judiciary . Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Washington: GPO, 1982. Web. 30 Nov. 2015.
Over the past five years Americans have seen many horrific tragedies related to gun violence. Each of these terrible events has been accompanied with scrutinizing media coverage, and subsequently, a push on government level for increased gun control. On the surface these movements to take away guns from Americans may seem justified because of these events. In reality the federal government is encroaching upon our Second Amendment, the right to bear arms.
Blackman, Josh, and Ilya Shapiro. "Keeping Pandora’s Box Sealed: Privileges or Immunities,The Constitution in 2020, and Properly Extending The Right to Keep and Bear Arms To The States." Cato Institute. 8:1 (2010): 1-90. Rpt. in CATO Organization. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print. .
There is a familiar saying that goes, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”. Punctuation before the end quote. Individuals should be able to protect themselves. Therefore, the 2nd Amendment states that we as citizens have the right to keep and bear arms, and it shall not be infringed. First and foremost, the Second Amendment was adopted into the United States Constitution on December 15, 1791. In today’s society, the Second Amendment has become a huge controversy; due to the ongoing debate over guns. However, people tend to forget that the Second Amendment protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. The right to own a weapon is not against the law. Surprisingly, “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding”(MacBradaigh, 2013, para. 8). Restrictions on carrying guns in places like schools, courtrooms, and hospitals are more understandable. “The words of the founders make clear they believed the individual right to own firearms was very important: Thomas Jefferson said, “No free man shall be debarred the use of arms” ("NRA-ILA | The Second Amendment", 2013, para. 12). If the Founding Fathers felt the need to address this issue, why shouldn’t the general public do the same? Most importantly, the Second Amendment protects individual rights, not collective. Yet, some people claim differently. Many people believed that the Second Amendment pertained only to “rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body” (MacBradaigh, 2013, para. 2). However, the Bill of Rights was created to protect the rights of individuals, and “in America, rights by definition belong to individuals” (...
Lund, Nelson. "Some Gun Control Regulations Are Unconstitutional." Guns and Violence. Ed. Laura K. Egendorf. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2005. Current Controversies. Rpt. from "Taking the Second Amendment Seriously." Weekly Standard (24 July 2000): 21-26. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 13 Mar. 2014.
Winkler, Adam. "The Second Amendment Is All for Gun Control." The Daily Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, Feb.-Mar. 2013. Web. 17 Dec. 2013.
The case of Columbia v. Heller, is a good example of how an interpretation of the 2nd Amendment can be misconstrued. Heller came...
The issue of gun control has always been a hot topic among the American public. Most everyone, if asked, will tell you that gun control is an issue needed to be dealt with because of the event that took place at Columbine High School back on April 20th, 1999. The American public has been wrestling with gun control long before then. If we take a look back at August 1st, 1966 at the University of Texas, a man armed with a hunting rifle committed one of the most violent mass murders in history. Gun control refers to the Government placing restrictions on the American public to buy, own and sell firearms. If we read the constitution, our second amendment right is the right to bear arms. This has been the ongoing controversy of this issue. We the people say our constitutional right to buy and own firearms is being seized from us. The government is using our society’s violent incidents as cover to place restrictions and bans on firearms. This essay’s purpose is to provide proof that buying and owning firearms is our legal constitutional right and that our government is trying to attack the wrong angle when trying to fight crime involving guns in the United States.
The second amendment states “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The Founding Fathers included this in the Bill of Rights because they feared the Federal Government might oppress the population if the people did not have the means to defend themselves as a nation or individuals.
Professional champions of civil rights and civil liberties have been unwilling to defend the underlying principle of the right to arms. Even the conservative defense has been timid and often inept, tied less, one suspects, to abiding principle and more to the dynamics of contemporary Republican politics. Thus a right older than the Republic, one that the drafters of two constitutional amendments the Second and the Fourteenth intended to protect, and a right whose critical importance has been painfully revealed by twentieth-century history, is left undefended by the lawyers, writers, and scholars we routinely expect to defend other constitutional rights. Instead, the Second Amendment’s intellectual as well as political defense has been left in the unlikely hands of the National Rifle Association (NRA). And although the NRA deserves considerably better than the demonized reputation it has acquired, it should not be the sole or even principal voice in defense of a major constitutional provision.