The Right To Bear Arms Analysis

Does the government have the right to regulate guns? According to former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger it does. In his article, published in the January 14, 1990, issue of Parade, titled The Right to Bear Arms, Warren feels that changes need to be made to the second amendment of our constitution in order to save peoples lives. He opens the essay with a statistic that states that many of the United State’s major centers have up to ten times the murder rate of all of Western Europe.

Warren then proceeds to give some background information on the second amendment. According to Warren the second amendment came from a fear of a “national” or “standing” army. The amendment was meant so that each state could form a militia instead of having a
large national army. The national army was limited to just 840 men so there was a need for militia back then, now we have a huge national defense establishment and no longer have the need for a militia. He then goes on to explain how many of the original settlers need firearms to get food and protect themselves from the natives. Warren makes it clear that Americans should have the right to defend their homes, or that sporting guns are not an issue. His problem is with the “Saturday night specials” and machine guns which are not recreational weapons and he feels that they should be regulated as much as motor vehicles.

Warren claims that there needs to be more regulations on gun ownership to decrease the murder rate in the United States.
He believes that people have the right to defend their homes as well as go hunting but does not like all the deaths that happen due to guns. To him the second amendment of the Constitution is outdated and no longer applies to the present day United
States.

In support of his claim, Warren states that many United States centers have ten times the murder rate of Western Europe.
This is a good statistic to throw out; it shows that another country is better in some way then the USA, which hits the national pride. He also uses some historical facts to backup his claim. When the United States was established as a country in the eighteenth century there was a need for a militia because the national army was limited to 840 men. People need the guns in order to protect their homes and country. Warren states that because we have such a large military now that there is no need for a militia and less of a need for guns. He believes that we no longer have to protect ourselves from Native Americans, the French, or the British. He uses these points to backup the claim that we need more regulations on gun ownership to decrease the murder rate in the United States. His warrant would be that if there were more regulations on guns in America then the murder rate would decrease.

Warren Burger’s article was very easy to read and had a simple vocabulary. He opened with some statistics that could shock some people and grab their attention. Then he dove right into the second amendment and its history. Around the end of the article he compares gun owner ship to that of cars, dogs, and bicycles. Then he asks the reader if it is unreasonable to make four changes in order to stop this mindless homicidal carnage. He tired to hit the reader logically, emotionally,
and ethically, I’m not sure that he really made much of an impact on the ethical part but definitely hit the others well.

His intended audience was probably the people of the United States of America. I would not say that he was solely aiming for the voting population because those under eighteen still go hunting and use firearms. Just because a person is under the legal age to vote does not mean that they do not have a voice. Those who are unable to vote can still go to their state capital or the national capital and lobby, form petitions, and things of that nature.
I think this article is well written but I do not think that it is extremely effective. Warren used a simple vocabulary so that almost anyone who picked it up could read it and understand what he was saying. I did not like the way that he spent most of the article taking about the history of the second amendment, and about the mindset of colonial America. The part that really lost me was at the very end of the article when he states that the constitution does not mention automobile or motorboats, to me this has no impact on a firearm. They are completely different things and I did not really much of a connection between that part and the rest of the article.

It did seem that he was really playing on the ethical and emotional part of the audience, and that is an effective way to sway the audience. Some people my look at the way automobile are registered and think that guns should be handled in a similar way, personally I do not share this feeling but I would not be surprised if someone did.

Works Cited
Rottenberg, A and Winchell, D., Elements of Argument, A Test and Reader-Eighth Edition, 2006