Issues and Controversies
Position Paper Garrett Kaufmann
ISSUES AND CONTROVERSIES ON FILE Citizenship 2nd Period
“Gun Control” Due 1/14/2013
May 29, 1998
Pages 225-233 I strongly believe that our right to keep and bear arms that was given to us as American citizens in the second amendment of the constitution should be upheld and gun control is not the answer to stopping gun violence. 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 Second Amendment. Our nations’ forefathers gave us this right when they signed the constitution of the United States of America September 17, 1787. Although there has been debate over the wording of the amendment and whether it actually means every individual person or only people who belong to a state-regulated militia. I think it is obvious that they meant each individual person. In a December 1989 article in the Yale Law Journal, titled ‘The Embarrassing second amendment’ by scholar Sanford Levinson, a liberal democrat who supports gun control said that “The second amendment was clearly written to give all citizens, not merely trained soldiers belonging to a militia the right to keep firearms”. Other scholars agreed and noted that in 1792 congress actually passed a militia low to mandate every able-bodied man to arm himself with a musket. The Brady Act is a controversial law which was signed by President Clinton in 1993 and that took effect in 1994 (named for President Reagan’s press secretary who was paralyzed when shot in a 1981 assassination attempt on the president) which requires prospective gun
ISSUES AND CONTROVERSIES ON FILE Citizenship 2nd Period
“Gun Control” Due 1/14/2013
May 29, 1998
Pages 225-233 I strongly believe that our right to keep and bear arms that was given to us as American citizens in the second amendment of the constitution should be upheld and gun control is not the answer to stopping gun violence. 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 Second Amendment. Our nations’ forefathers gave us this right when they signed the constitution of the United States of America September 17, 1787. Although there has been debate over the wording of the amendment and whether it actually means every individual person or only people who belong to a state-regulated militia. I think it is obvious that they meant each individual person. In a December 1989 article in the Yale Law Journal, titled ‘The Embarrassing second amendment’ by scholar Sanford Levinson, a liberal democrat who supports gun control said that “The second amendment was clearly written to give all citizens, not merely trained soldiers belonging to a militia the right to keep firearms”. Other scholars agreed and noted that in 1792 congress actually passed a militia low to mandate every able-bodied man to arm himself with a musket. The Brady Act is a controversial law which was signed by President Clinton in 1993 and that took effect in 1994 (named for President Reagan’s press secretary who was paralyzed when shot in a 1981 assassination attempt on the president) which requires prospective gun