Gun Control

Gun Control and the Second Amendment

Eddie Hardcastle

ENG107

American InterContinental University Online

Abstract

Gun control laws and the Second Amendment are in the midst of a long ongoing controversy. The Second Amendment provides the right to keep and bear arms. Pro-gun advocates believe that the amendment infringes on their right to own guns. The Second Amendment was framed by our fore-father for protection of the settlers on the frontier and to hunt food. But since the amendment was written there have been discussions of making the gun control laws stricter. In this essay it will argue the fact that the gun control laws do need to be stricter and the background checks need to be more thorough to keep guns out of the hands of criminal and psychopaths.

Second Amendment

“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” (Gale, 2005).

Firearms played a major part in the foundation of America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The colonists relied on their right to have firearms to protect themselves from the Indians and to take land from the Indians. Virginia was the first to adopt a state constitution stating the makeup of a well regulated militia. After that other colonies drafted their own state constitutions.

Pennsylvania declared, “that the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the state; and as standing armies in the time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; And that the military should be kept under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power” (2005).

The wording of the amendment was change twice before it was finally accepted by the U.S. Senate in 1789. Ever since the Constitution was ratified in 1791 with the Second Amendment it has presented challenges in it interpretation. The Supreme Court makes the determination of the Constitutions meaning. The...