The Second Amendment

The Second Amendment and the right to bear arms has always been a part of American culture and history, the right to bear arms is as American as apple pie and westerns, but it has and always will be a hot topic and the wording and meaning of the Second Amendment comes into question frequently. The currently accepted meaning of the Second Amendment is that it gives militias and individuals the right to bear arms, the right to own firearms (“Second Amendment to the United States Constitution”). However even though the right to bear arms is given to every American it can be revoked, many states have sensible laws that restrict where you can take a firearm and who can own them, and many Americans support these restrictions even though they technically
Heller (“District of Colombia V. Heller”, Oyez) had major influence over the right to bear arms and the interpretation of the Second Amendment. Therefore the focus of this case was whether or not the District of Colombia’s gun laws violated the citizen’s right to bear arms and the Second Amendment. The District of Colombia’s laws in question banned handguns and required all legal firearms to be disassembled or locked, preventing them from being used for self-defense. But before the judges made their decisions they had to look at the Second Amendment and determine the meaning of it, and if the right to bear arms applied to the citizen’s. Therefore Heller and his attorneys claimed that the citizens were given the right to bear arms by the Second Amendment; they used the fact that the laws prevented citizen from protecting themselves with firearms which they claimed was protected by the Second Amendment. While The District of Colombia and its representatives and the federal trial court in Washington D.C. used the wording of the Second Amendment as evidence that the right to bear arms only applied to militias, such as the army, National Guard and law enforcement. But when the case got to the U.S Supreme Court, the judges ruled with a five to four decision that the Second Amendment is made to protect every individual’s right to bear arms not just the militias, because of this ruling it forever changed the interpretation of the
In addition landmark court case District of Colombia V. Heller helped to contribute to the currently accept meaning of the Second Amendment and the case also attributed to other contemporary court cases being filed, and it was used as evidence in them and most likely will be used as evidence in many more cases to come. Even though the true intention of the Second Amendment may never be fully known, I believe that because of some of the court cases the basic intention of the Second Amendment that the founding fathers had in mind when they wrote it has been established as the meaning of the Second Amendment. So in conclusion the right to bear arms and the Second Amendment has and probably always will be a hot topic, but I think because of the court cases the basic meaning of the Second Amendment has been revealed, and even though technology and ideals may change the right to bear arms will not because it is protected by the Second Amendment and because it is a very American