Second Amendment

Second Amendment:

CIVIL LIBERTIES BEING CHALLENGED

The Second Amendment has become the most talked about amendment in recent times. I am sure that this has become the forefront of most political person’s discussions in recent times because of the violence that has taken hold of our society. Is it that guns need to be controlled or the people using them? After all, it isn’t guns that kill people, its people that kill people. But as it pertains to the second amendment, is our current government trying to impede our second amendment right to bear arms? This is a personal opinion I feel, and is not black and white. My opinion is crazy people should have guns. It doesn’t mean that they should not have a certain type of gun, but any type of gun.

I feel that we all need to know a little more history of the second amendment in order to achieve a knowledgeable stance on whether or not our civil liberties are being revoked. I will try to give you some of the background of the amendment and let you decide if your civil liberty is crumbling. The actual amendment reads as follows:

A well regulated militia (a body of citizens organized in a paramilitary group and typically regarding themselves as defenders of individual rights against the presumed interference of the federal government), being necessary to the security of a free state,(US ) history (before the Civil War) any state prohibiting slavery ) , the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.

Now that the United States is protected by a trained, volunteer military force, rather than a civilian militia, is the Second Amendment still valid? Does the Second Amendment exclusively provide for arms to supply a civilian militia, or does it guarantee a separate universal right to bear arms? The well –regulated militia that is referred to in the second amendment was, in fact, the 18th century equivalent to the U.S. Armed Forces. The United States that existed at the time of the writing of this amendment had no professionally trained army. Instead our country relied on civilian militias for self-defense, in other words, all available men between the ages of 18 and 50. The United States relied on the power of its own citizens to defend the country against attack.

There was no change of this type of defense until John Adams (1797-1801), who established a professional navy to protect the US. Today, there is no military draft at all. The US Army is made up of professionally trained soldiers who are compensated for their services. Additionally, the US armed forces have not fought a single battle on American soil since the American Civil War in 1865. So clearly a (well regulated militia is no longer a necessity), so does the second clause of the second Amendment still apply, even if the first clause is no longer meaningful? Research found that most Americans believe that the Second Amendment protects individual firearm ownership (Gallup poll 2003). These are the pros to that, thinking * Clearly our founding fathers believed in a universal right to bear arms. * The Supreme Court in 1939 ruled in favor of the civilian militia interpretation but not since then. That was 74 years ago when racial segregation, banning birth control, saying the Lord’s Prayer in public schools was also considered constitutional, but not now. * The constitution is a document, regardless of why the Second Amendment justifies its own existence, is neither here or there; it still exists as part of the Constitution. * The Eighteenth Amendment established prohibition; the Twenty First Amendment overturned it. We the American people have the means, through the legislative process, to overturn the Second Amendment if it is no longer worthwhile. If it is truly obsolete, then why hasn’t it been overturned? * The constitution aside, bearing arms is a fundamental human right.

It is the only means the American people have to reclaim control of the government, should it one day become irredeemable corrupt. Is that now?
If there are pros to bearing arms then there must be cons, which I feel needs to be addressed in order to give the reader both sides, to form your own opinion. * While when the amendment was written the founding fathers knew of only the powder loaded, very slow rifles, it’s doubtful that they would have been able to conceive of the weapons that are being used on the general population today. Assault rifles, shotguns, handguns, and a multitude of other modern day weapons, which people are getting their hands on. * The Supreme Court ruling in 1939, but has stayed silent on this matter ever since. If the court has held a different view, it has certainly had plenty of time to speak up and out about this amendment. * The Second Amendment makes no sense with the prospect of civilian militias, which of course are not being used today. * If the Second Amendment is there for the people’s right to bear arms, to insure that if necessary the people could take back the government, then I would think we would need more than the right to bear arms. We would need aircraft, tanks, ships etc. The only way we would be able to take back the control of the government in this example would be through nonviolent means. * What the research has found, is that the Majority of Americans believe about the Second Amendment is not surprising because a majority of Americans have been misinformed about what the Second Amendment accomplishes and how federal courts traditionally interpreted it. State and Federal Courts historically have used two models to interpret the Second Amendment:

The “individual rights” model, which holds that individuals hold the right to bear arms, and the “collective rights” model, which holds that the right is dependent on the militia membership. The Supreme Court, in favor of the individual rights model, has discarded the “collective rights” model. The Second Amendment protects the individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that are for traditional lawful purposes, such as self defense within the home. So clearly after reading all the information that I gathered I have come to the conclusion that there is no absolute was to exclude the deranged or manic person from obtaining a weapon. So therefore we must look to ourselves “the people” and demand accountability from these people who use guns in a violent manner against unsuspecting people, and we must punish those who commit the crimes. Our political leaders right now seem to be content to divide this Nation along political, racial and economical lines to ensure their own positions. This discussion will go on through the ages, and we the people need to make sure that we have the right to decide.