The Right To Bear Arms Case Study

The Right to Bear Arms

Chad Hill

American Government
Maj. David Thorneloe
January 09, 2014

The right to bear arms is the most important liberty to American citizens. It allows people to protect themselves from other people and the government. Even though firearm technology has vastly improved the fundamental right remains. The founding fathers had the foresight so see this and call it arms. Even in the late 17thand early 1800 century fire arms where even then progressing.

The reason why we have the 2nd Amendment

A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State, the right of the people shall not be infringed1. The framers understood that a public without arms would
Heller had a very important ruling. District of Columbia law bans handgun possession by making it a crime to carry an unregistered firearm and prohibiting the registration of handguns; provides separately that no person may carry an unlicensed handgun, but authorizes the police chief to issue 1-year licenses; and requires residents to keep lawfully owned firearms unloaded and dissembled or bound by a trigger lock or similar device. Respondent Heller, a D. C. special policeman, applied to register a handgun he wished to keep at home, but the District refused. He filed this suit seeking, on Second Amendment grounds, to enjoin the city from enforcing the bar on handgun registration, the licensing requirement insofar as it prohibits carrying an unlicensed firearm in the home, and the trigger-lock requirement insofar as it prohibits the use of functional firearms in the home. The District Court dismissed the suit, but the D. C. Circuit reversed, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to possess firearms and that the city’s total ban on handguns, as well as its requirement that firearms in the home be kept nonfunctional even when necessary for self-defense, violated that right.3 There are two clauses that stand out the most from this court case: 1. The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a
In its first hearing on the subject, in Presser v. Illinois (1886), the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment prevented the states from “prohibiting the people from keeping and bearing arms, so as to deprive the United States of their rightful resource for maintaining the public security4.” More than four decades later, in United States v. Schwimmer (1929), the Supreme Court cited the Second Amendment as enshrining that the duty of individuals “to defend our government against all enemies whenever necessity arises is a fundamental principle of the Constitution” and holding that “the common defense was one of the purposes for which the people ordained and established the Constitution.” Meanwhile, in United States v. Miller (1939)5, in a prosecution under the National Firearms Act (1934), the Supreme Court avoided addressing the constitutional. The Supreme Court also affirmed previous rulings that the Second Amendment ensured the right of individuals to take part in the defending of their liberties by taking up arms in an organized militia. However, the court was clear to emphasize that an individual’s right to an “organized militia” is not “the sole institutional beneficiary of the Second Amendment’s