Kant Second Amendment

1 - To be healthy: enjoying good physical and mental health and living a healthy lifestyle.

Natural Rights (Locke) appear in the declaration of Independence as "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". Jean Rousseau developed the idea of the social contract and the notion of replacing a government that fails to maintain consent is cited as justification for the American Revolution against the English.

Ratified December 15, 1791, the bill of rights was added to the U.S. Constitution as a way to ensure the protection of every individual’s rights. The bill itself is a list of rights which limits the power of the federal government and gives power back to the people in the form of rights and liberties. Some of this rights include freedom of speech, religion, and press, but perhaps the one right that still to this day has many people questioning the meaning behind its wording is the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment states that “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” (Acosta, 2008). In short the amendment grants the right to bear arms,

The Second Amendment states that “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”.1 It is important to understand that the Second Amendment was created in order to allow the American people to form militias in response to a tyrannical government attempting to suppress the American way of life. In order for Americans to form militias, they must uphold their freedom to bear arms as a

In December 1791, the Second Amendment was made: The Second Amendment offers “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep arms, and shall not be infringed.” This basically means United States gives the right to its residents to keep arms, and it guaranteed individuals the right to possess arms for their own personal defense. In the past few decades there been thousands of pages that are written seeking to uncover the meaning of the “the people,” and “bear arms,” have been strongly debated.

The second amendment of United States constitution said “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”. This amendment was embraced on December 15, 1791, taking in consideration that American citizens have a natural right to self-defense and they can help to accomplish the following purposes:

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss-born French Enlightenment thinker most famous for the 1762, “The Social Contract.” “The Social Contract” is Rousseau’s most valued work due to its ties within the French Revolution.

     This timeless phrase, the Second Amendment of the United States’ Constitution, is an enduring example of the principles and ideals that our country was founded on. With this statement, the founders of this country explicitly and perpetually guaranteed the American individual the right to keep and bear arms. An incomparably crucial element of this country‘s origins, the Second Amendment and the rights it guarantees have proved vital to the growth and success of our nation.

One of the most important writers of the Enlightenment was the philosopher and novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). The work of Rousseau has influenced a generation and beyond and it is argued that the main ideals of the French and American revolutions arose from his works, for example The Discourse on Equality. The main concept of Rousseau's thought is that of 'liberty', and his belief that modern society forced humans to give up their independence, making everyday life corrupt and unfree. One of the central problems Rousseau confronted is best summed up in the first line of arguably his most important work, The Social Contract.

In this book, Rousseau aims to discover why people gave up their liberty and how political authority became legitimate. In his case, sovereignty is vesting in the entire populace, who enter into the contract directly with one another. He explained, “The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remains as free as before.” That was the fundamental problem which Social Contract provides the solution.

These gun control advocates argue that the Second Amendment grew out of the colonists’ fear of standing armies and their belief that having militias that were composed of ordinary citizens was the surest way of maintaining their freedom (3).

Rousseau is theorizing from the concept of the general will, which promotes individuals to become conscious citizens who actively participate as a community to form policies for a governing structure. The general will advocates for a commitment to generality, a common interest that will unite all citizens for the benefit of all. Rousseau states, “each one of us puts into the community his person and all his powers under the supreme direction of the general will; and as a body, we incorporate every member as an indivisible part of the whole” (Rousseau 61). The general will is an expression of the law that is superior to an individual’s

The political philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Karl Marx examined the role that the state played and its relationship to its citizen’s participation and access to the political economy during different struggles and tumultuous times. Rousseau was a believer of the concept of social contract with limits established by the good will and community participation of citizens while government receives its powers given to it. Karl Marx believed that power was to be taken by the people through the elimination of the upper class bourgeois’ personal property and capital. While both philosophers created a different approach to establishing the governing principles of their beliefs they do share a similar concept of eliminating ownership of

John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau are great political philosophers that have many similar insights about society and its political form. However, when closely examining the writings of these thinkers, one can easily discover many subtle differences among them. The two philosophers base their theories on different assumptions, which subsequently lead to dissimilar ideas about the origin of society and the constitution of governments. As a result, their views of the development of society greatly dissent from each other. Locke's and Rousseau's different versions in the development of society cause them to reach disparate conclusions concerning the legislative power, social unit, and revolution rights of the society. Locke believes that

Therefore it is the people who hold the power within the state, and also the legal subjects within the republic. Rousseau refers to the individuals as citizens when they are acting passively, and sovereign when acting as an active group for example, devising laws. He writes 'this public group, so formed by the union of all other persons...power when compared with others like itself' (lines 41-43 Rousseau extract). Rousseau's evaluates his solution, perhaps tersely earlier in his work by suggesting that 'the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole of the community' (lines 17-18 Rousseau extract). The main aspects that incorporates Rousseau's version of social contract theory is that he wants to make a distinct separation of the 'will of all' from 'general will'. Will of all or individual will, is private wills and specific to each of the state's members, while general will is a common will for all and reflect the common good for state members. By separating the two wills, can help to reduce conflict that may arise between the two, and by evaluating all the opinions of each member. It is possible to see what issues are more pressing, and cancel out individualistic wills, if the majority of individuals share the opinions, thus making this majority, the general will. Rousseau sums this up when he writes, 'There is often a great deal of