2nd Amendment Debate: Firearms in the US Today - Essay Sample

Introduction

The most controversial Amendment in the current society is the Second Amendment because it is making headlines these days. It represents one of the amendments that was made on the United States Constitution which are ten in total up to date and for more than 200 years, regardless of several legislative actions and extensive debate concerning the transportation, purchase, and possession of firearms together with curtailing the ownership of firearms in the United States; there was lack of conclusive resolution by several courts to ascertain the right that is protected by the Second Amendment. (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2018). The exact meaning and interpretation of the Second Amendment have been disputed and debated for hundreds of years by both scholars who try to interpret and by the Supreme Court rulings made from 1876 to the year 2008 when landmark case was decided by the Supreme Court which ruled for the first time in favor of an individual defendant who owned a gun, stating the ownership of guns by individual citizens is protected under the Second Amendment right, as the Court affirmed the right stated by the Amendment to belong to individuals.

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The Second Amendment right is not unlimited, and at the same time, the right does not prevent the existence of various prohibitions that forbid ownership of firearms by mentally ill and felony or certain long-standing restrictions on carrying of unusual and dangerous weapons. All three levels of governments, such as the federal, state, and local, are limited to the same extent from invading the right. The paper discusses the history of the Second Amendment right and its interpretation together with meaning. The paper also discusses several Supreme Court rulings concerning the right presented in the Second Amendment. (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2018).

History of the Second Amendment Right

The Second Amendment offers the citizens of the United States with the right to bear arms. The Amendment was done on the Constitution of the United States, and it was ratified in 1791. The Amendment checked the power of Congress on the perspective of the Constitution under Section 8 of Article I, which was overseeing the work of Congress concerning the federal Militia. The Amendment stated that a well-regulated Militia is necessary for a free state, and the citizens have to be granted the right to keep and, at the same time, bear arms for their protection. (Gura, 2013). The Amendment was proposed by James Madison for a short period after the official ratification of the United States Constitution. The proposal was based on providing more power to militias, which are in the current U.S is the National Guard. The Amendment was deemed a compromise between two groups of different interests who are the federalists or supporters of the formation of the Constitution at that time and the anti-federalist group who wanted more power to remain in States. The main goal of the Amendment during its creation was to provide citizens with the opportunity to defend themselves from a tyrannical federal government.

The rights in the Second Amendment were included in the bill of rights, and the words of the Amendment were adapted from thirteen state constitutions, which were nearly the same. The word militia in the Amendment during the revolutionary war era was referred to be groups of individuals who came together to protect their communities, states, colonies, and towns after 1776 when the United States gained its independence from Great Britain. (Lund & Winkler, 2015).

At the time of the Amendment, several Americans believed that soldiers were being utilized by the government to oppress citizens, and the federal government was the only level of government to raise armies at the time of facing foreign opponents. It then emerged that the responsibility of protection should also be given to ordinary citizens or the part-time militias by giving them the right to own weapons.

Before the official ratification of the United States Constitution, the federal government had the power even in peacetime to great a standing army. It was the strong power of the central government that the anti-federalists were against. The group feared that the federal army might deprive states of defending themselves, and Congress might fail to equip militiamen with arms, which represents an abuse of the Constitution by Congress, which requires arming, organizing, and disciplining the Militia. (Gura, 2013).

Hence, after the official ratification of the Constitution, the Second Amendment was proposed to give power to the state militias through the establishment of the principle that deprived the government of the power to disarm citizens. The Amendment was, to an extent, based on the English common law on the right to keep and, at the same time, bear arms. It was also influenced by the English Bill of Rights that was put in place in 1689. (Gura, 2013). Sir William Blackstone described the right to possess and bear arms as a primary right that supports individual natural rights such as the right to resist oppression and the right to self-defense.

Interpretation of the Second Amendment Right

Since the ratification of the Second Amendment, its interpretation and meaning have been debated with several arguments being made on two sides. The Amendment is divided into the prefatory clause, which covers the collective right, and the second part is the operative clause, which covers the individual right. The debate circles around the extent to which the Amendment provides individual rights to keep and bear arms. It is also debated whether the Amendment offers collective rights for the American citizens, which is only exercised via formal units of Militia. The group that argues that the Amendment represents a collective right, base their arguments on the clause of well-regulated Militia in the Second Amendment. They argued that the amendment right of keeping and bearing arms should be given only to organized groups that replaced the state militias immediately after the end of the civil war, such groups are the reserve military force and the National Guard. (Rostron,2014).Also, the individuals who take the collective side of the argument think that the Second Amendment grants the state the right to train and retain formal militia groups who can protect them against the federal government oppression. They believe that the right to carry guns legally is given to the official state militia and such Militia cannot be abolished by the federal government. The approach here is centered on the states' right to have their own Militia and who are armed. The group advocating for collective rights was of the opinion that the Second Amendment was only ratified to prevent state militia from being disarmed by the federal government, instead of being ratified to provide rights of individual citizens from being disarmed or to own guns. The collective right model of the Second Amendment was frequently endorsed by the decision of every circuit court prior to 2001. (Lund & Winkler, 2015).In the first clause that advocates the right presented by the Second Amendment belongs to the collective action, every state is granted the right to keep armed militia units who are ready at any time to protect the state against any action done by the federal government or against any threat that requires the services of the Militia.

On the other side of the argument, those individuals who see the Second Amendment to provide the right of keeping and bearing arms to all citizens instead of only the militias. The group interpretation is on the right of United States citizens to bear arms to protect themselves. The notable group that supports the argument is the National Rifle Association, which was founded in 1871, and it is against the idea of gun control at the federal, state, and local levels of the government. Those of this viewpoint believed the Second Amendment gives the right to own guns to individual citizens for self-protection, and the federal government cannot regulate them. The belief was that the militia clause in the Amendment meant giving each citizen of the United States to keep and bear a gun without restrictions. ( Kopel, 2013).

More so, the supporters of this argument believed that, although the first clause described the general purpose of the Amendment, the second clause, on the other hand, controls the whole Amendment, and it confers with the right of individuals to own guns. The notable cases that were resolved against the collective right and in favor of individual rights began in 2001 with the Fifth Circuit Court that ruled the case of United States v. Emerson. The other one was the ruling involving the District of Columbia v. Heller, which was made in 2008 by the Supreme Court together with the McDonald v. Chicago in 2010. (Lund & Winkler, 2015).

The ongoing debate on gun control has been shaped to a large extent by the two interpretations of the Second Amendment rights. The supporters of the individual right to keep and bear a gun like the National Rifle Association who argue for the right of owning a gun to be given to all citizens by the Second Amendment. Those supporting gun control, an example being the Brandy campaign, argue that the Second Amendment does not give each individual a right to own a gun. Still, that right is given to organized groups, and they feel restrictions like giving out guns under certain conditions, place of taking, and the type to be owned are essential to be created to control gun ownership. (Gura, 2013).

Generally, the outcome of the Second Amendment right is increased number of gun ownership by American citizens which, as per the report of Small Arms Survey in the year 2018, the number of civilians who own arms in the United States accounts for a large number of civilians who own arms globally. (Lund & Winkler, 2015). In the U.S alone, about 393 million firearms owned by civilians, which represent 46 percent of the worldwide civilians owned firearms. The number accounts for about 120.5 guns per 100 United States residents. The firearms owned by civilians owning guns in the United States alone as a result of the Second Amendment right of keeping and bearing arms by civilians has surpassed the total number of firearms controlled by the world armed forces, which accounts to about 133 million of the world's small arms. The civilians own nearly 400 times as many firearms as the law enforcement and 100 times as many as the United States military. (Lund & Winkler, 2015).

The Second Amendment was accepted very easily by the legislators at the time its discussion was taking place due to the agreement that the power of the federal government is curtailed from reaching an extend where its power violates the rights of civilians to own a firearm. Concerning the protection of individual rights of owning a firearm, the Amendment should be interpreted in a way that enables the three levels of governments to ban the use of firearms in urban areas that mostly experience high-crimes. (Gura, 2013).

The Supreme Court and the Second Amendment Rights

The debate on the right to own a gun mostly takes place in the Court of public opinion, but it is the opinion of the Supreme Court that matters. Yet the Supreme Court has alleged very little concerning the debate on the right of keeping and bearing a gun even though its opinion is the most valuable of all.

It was in the year 1876 when the Supreme Court made the first ruling concerning the Second Amendment rights. The case was about the affiliates of the Ku Klux Klan, who denied the black citizens the right to own guns and the right to assembly. (Rostron, 2014). The ruling of the case was made by the Supreme Court, which said that the right of every citizen to keep and bear ar...