The Endless Gun Control Debate

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Recommended: Controversy for the second amendment

The Constitution of the United States of America went into effect on March 4, 1789. It has been amended twenty-seven times. The first ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights. It contains valuable freedoms which the founders thought necessary and were left out of the constitution. The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791. (United States Constitution) The Second Amendment to the Constitution has drawn a great deal of criticism especially in recent years. The topic of gun control is controversial, and issues involving it have gone to the Supreme Court.
The Second Amendment States, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” (Grant, 2009) Our Constitution and the Bill of Rights are derived from British Common Law. Britain did not have a written constitution as we have. They had a set of unwritten ideas and traditions that were followed. These ideas and traditions acted as a balance of power to the king. (LaPierre, 2008) According to LaPierre (2008), “The Founders believed in the basic rights of “the people” as described in those documents and in the common law”. The rights of the people are laid out in the Constitution and the Amendments to it.
At the time when the Second Amendment was written, the U.S. was still in the wake of the Revolutionary War. The last thing anyone wanted was to suffer under another tyrannical government. There was no organized national army at this time. The only defense they had was state militias. “A militia was a group of citizens who defended their community as emergencies arose. Militias consisted mainly of able-bodied adult male civilians and some professional s...

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...Fairfax, VA: Boru Publishing, Inc.
Lott, J. (2003). The Bias Against Guns. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing.
Madison, J. (1788). Federalist No.46. In The Federalist Papers.
McDonald v. Chicago. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald_v._Chicago
McDonald v. Chicago. (2010). Retrieved from Cornell University Law School: http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/08-1521
Taranto, J. (2012, July 23). OK, Let's Debate Gun Control! Retrieved from The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000087239639044402 5204577544881193377296
The White House. (2013). Now Is The Time. Washington, D.C.: The White House.
United States Constitution. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Constitution
United States v. Miller. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Miller

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