Keeping the Right to Bear Arms Alive

While mass shootings cause a huge unnecessary loss of life, most killings in the United States come from murders and crimes. Guns should be banned to lower crime rates. Because “more than 70% of homicides are committed with a firearm” (Cannon n.p.) and 2.

According to Jeffery Goldberg, guns are responsible for 30,000 deaths a year. This causes people who hear about crimes with guns involved to immediately think that the gun is the issue, but often guns are what saved the vi¬¬ctims life. Sharon Harris cited leading criminologist Gary

Throughout the history of the United States, many gun laws have been passed and many have also failed. One of the most recent in memory is the law proposed by current president, Barack Obama. President Obama lets the public know that this is, "Just round 1" in his fight for stricter gun laws (Obama). Obama is showing the people that he is tired of being bullied around by Congress. He is not going to give up his fight for gun laws that easily. One failed bill is not going to stop him and he will fight as long as he is in office to bring new bills to law.

Gun violence has been on the rise for many years and there seems to be no solution. People feel more protected with guns in their home, but actually this increases their risk to be in harm’s way of being hurt or killed because of the gun. The majority of gun ownership is owned by civilians “75 percent of the world’s 875 million guns are civilian controlled”(Gun Violence). People also feel more protected when they carry a gun on their person but this also increases their risk of being harmed “Philadelphia study found that the odds of an assault victim being shot were 4.5 times greater if he carried a gun" and that "his odds of being killed were 4.2 times greater when armed”(Gun Violence). If people knew that it increases their risk of being killed then not very many people will carry a gun around.

Some Democratic and Republican leaders and followers are interested in a bi-partisan middle ground when it comes to gun control. President Obama proposed a “Common-sense gun safety reform”. This would include, businesses that are selling firearms must be licensed to do so, expanded background checks, and improve mental health outreach (Rienzi, 2016). A majority of Americans, including gun owners, support new gun restrictions (ProCon.org, 2016).

In the United States the right to own a gun is enshrined by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The text of the Second Amendment reads: “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” (Adams, 2004). The founding fathers borrowed this idea from Niccolo Machiavelli, the Italian thinker. He wrote about the weapons necessary for freedom to defend themselves, to hunt, and to protect the state against foreign invasion. For two hundred years, this tradition has become an integral part of American culture that spawned many cultural phenomena that have become the hallmark of the United States. For example, duels in the desert areas of the

Kids always try to get their hands on a Nerf or airsoft gun. But imagine if people HAD to bear arms in the US. People get shot all of the time, and that is one of the major reasons why this law should be passed. Also, guns are popular, with people going paintballing and kids playing with Nerf guns. But the only problem would be that if weapons are distributed into the wrong hands, heck could break loose. This law should be passed because is for the better.

Firearms caused a lot of trouble in the United States for example, 68 percent of murders, 41 percent of robberies, and 21 percent of aggravated assaults were all related to firearms in 2011.

The right to keep and bear arms may be the single most controversial and contentious right listed in the constitution and this might be because the right was listed in 1791 and understanding what the founders and framers actually meant. Some people think that the Second Amendment is outdated and if the founders even had any idea of what kind of weaponry we would have today they would have included that the right to keep and bear arms should only be used in hunting and sportsman ship.

In 2010, in the decision McDonald v. Miller, the U.S. Supreme Court formally incorporated the second amendment of the U.S. Constitution through the fourteenth, and in so doing officially applied the District of Columbia v. Heller decision to the states (McDonald v. Chicago, 2010). The opinion of the case authored by Justice Samuel Alito based its principal argument on the claim that the “right to bear arms” was not only a right guaranteed to the individual, but also a “fundamental right” in the U.S. constitution (U.S. Const. amend. II. and McDonald v. Chicago, 2010). Gun control and gun rights in the United States based on the second amendment have been a subject of intense debate only relatively recently with the emergence of groups such as the National Rifle Association and the Brady Campaign (in class notes). These initiatives have shaped public opinion on guns and spurred countless debates among scholars, judicial figures, and citizens over the meaning and purpose of the second amendment. In light of these arguments and conflicts between those employing collective theory to understand the amendment and those interpreting the right to “bear arms” as pertaining purely to an individual, it is not surprising that gun control and regulation in the United States continues to motivate such passionate defenses and condemnations (U.S. Const. amend. II and Cornell, 2010). These two arguments regarding the meaning and intent of the second amendment present significantly different interpretations. While those who advocate for collective theory argue that the amendment protects only the right of individual to use “arms” in

One major issue in the United States today is the freedom to bear arms. There are split beliefs on this issue. Some people are against people being permitted to have a firearm because guns kill people. Other people are for being permitted to have a firearm because guns do not kill people on their own. It is the person behind the gun pulling the trigger that kills a person. In this paper, I will discuss both sides of this huge, nationwide issue.

As far as overall gun violence is concerned, according to the FBI's 1998 Uniform Crime Reports, the overall violent crime rate in the US decreased about 7%. Robbery alone declined by 11%, the lowest since 1969. In addition, murder dropped by 7%, the lowest since 1967. More significantly, despite the fact the number of firearms and handguns owned by individual Americans continued to increase from 1997-1998, the FBI also reported the rate of firearms used to commit murder and robberies decreased in 1998. (1998 Uniform Crime Reports). These facts conclusively prove that firearms owned by peaceable citizens do not lead to increased murder or violent crime rates. In fact, they demonstrate that armed citizens lead to reduced rates of violent crime. When the gun is in the hands of a well-rounded person, it is no more of a weapon than your every day curling iron.

The American Constitution was a book of laws that gave a brief explanation of the American Dream. In the Constitution, there were ten laws that were considered the “Civil Rights,” and one of these laws laid commonly questioned and tested. The second Amendment of the Constitution: the right to bear arms was a very significant law in the American Constitution, since it has two sides of opinion. Many Americans consider that people should not have the right to bear arms, while the other party believed that America could be considerably safer if this law was ratified. Which party was factual?

The problem with guns is fairly obvious: they decrease the difficulty of killing or injuring a person. In Jeffrey A. Roth's Firearms and Violence (NIJ Research in Brief, February 1994), he points out the obvious dangers. About 60 percent of all murder victims in the United States in 1989 (about 12,000 people) were killed with firearms. Firearm attacks injured another 70,000 victims, some of whom were left permanently disabled. In 1985, the cost of shootings was an estimated $14 billion nationwide for medical care, long-term disability, and premature death. In robberies and assaults, victims are far more likely to die when the perpetrator is armed with a gun than when he or she has another weapon or is unarmed.

In this essay highlighting the second amendment, I will focus mostly on the right to bear arms. 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.” I think that the founders put this in the constitution to keep the sense of freedom they had in England concerning arms, and other than a small force of paid officers, the United States had no professional, trained army. Instead it relied almost exclusively on civilian militias for self-defense, focusing primarily on men aged 18-50. In the event of attack by a foreign country, there would be no trained military force to hold back the British or the French. This changed when John Adams became president. When John ADams became president, he made a proffessional navy to protect vessels and trade ships from pirates. Today, there is no military draft at all. The U.S. Army is made up of a mix of full-time and part-time professional soldiers. This is important in maintaining the US armed forces and the morale of the troops. Finally, this paper will focus on the current controversies of the second amendment, the past precedents, and the overall meaning of the amendment. Its important to realize how the meaning of the amendment has changed over the years, and how it affects your life and how you live it. Knowing all the amendments current meanings is vital to being a knowledgeable citizen.