Do you have the right?

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Americans are a people of tradition. We celebrate holidays throughout the year to honor people, to commemorate certain events, and even to cheer for a team we want to win the Super Bowl. Traditions like these helped to form the very basis of the great United States of America. We hand these traditions down to our children, just as they have been handed to us by those who came before. We learn what it means to be an American. This can range from voting in every election or eating every other meal at McDonalds. This is a legacy that is left to us and that we create. In the government there are policies that help to protect our traditions and reaffirm their meaning and values. In Brown v. the Board of Education, we threw out the idea of separate but equal. In Marbury v. Madison we had judicial review. These cases helped to form government policy in the right manner and contribute to every single part of our daily life. Policies like those gleaned from these cases make America into a land of opportunity. One were the people, all the people, have individual rights and liberties. Among these rights are to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the constitution there is one article in particular that offers the individual the opportunity to protect these rights if need be with violent methods. There have always been people who deny that weapons in any form are unnecessary for the general public and are not part of our legacy nor history. This being said, it is undeniable that in the courts and our homes weapons of any sort play an important part in our lives, whether they are being talked about or in physical form. Therefore, the concept of weapons is one which is a legacy that was built for us Americans and is intertwined with... ... middle of paper ... ... Act passed. The idea of this act was to decreace possession and ownership of “gangster” weapons which included, short barreled firearms and machine guns. Instead of completely banning them altogether, the federal government decided to levy an extremely high tax on ownership transfers. Back then the transfer tax was $200 with a fine of $2000 and jail time for not paying it. In today’s monetary values that would be over $3500 and $35,300. The goal of taxing them out of existence was highly possible. United States v. Miller was the challenge for the Constitutionality of this Act. In it, the Supreme Court ruled that the 2nd protected only arms suitable for military purpose and not ones that “constitute the arsenal of the public enemy.” This case proved to the public how the laws can be interpreted to mean different things depending on who is translating the laws.

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