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The second amendment gun control essay
The second amendment gun control essay
The impact of the Bill of Rights on our lives
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Civilian ownership of firearms has for more than two hundred years been the very cornerstone upon which the liberty of the public has been supported. The very reason that Americans have never suffered a tyranny on the scale of Nazi-Germany has been due to the proliferation of firearms in the hands of the general public. The Second Amendment to the Bill of rights of the United States Constitution 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." In order to understand that right, the modern reader must understand the semantics of the eighteenth century. The term "Well Regulated" meant well trained according to James Madison, the principle author of the Constitution. The term militia, according to the Militia Act of 1792, referred to all able-bodied male citizens. The meaning then of the Second Amendment is made quite clear. It is meant to serve as a chain upon the government to prevent the infringement of government power upon the Civil Liberties of Americans. Further proof of this can be seen in a quote from George Madison. "I ask, Sir, What is the Militia? It is the whole people, except for a few public officials." (George Madison, Three Elliot, Debates at 425-426). Richard Henry Lee, in his Additional Letters from the Federal Farmer of 1788 stated, "A militia, when properly formed, are in fact the people themselves.and include all men capable of bearing arms." Title Ten section 331 of the U.S. code states "The Militia of the United States consists of all able bodied men at least seventeen years of age." The founding fathers of the United States believed that government is a necessary evil. They wrote the Bill of Rights, as stated earlier, to serve as a chain, which would limit government power over its citizens. Civilian ownership of firearms would, in the founding fathers' view, be the " American Peoples' liberty teeth." (George Washington). This is to say that, despite attempts by some hypothetical future government to impose a tyranny, the American people would be able to resist it without armed force. The same founding fathers had only thrown off the yoke of tyranny during the revolution. They knew full well the value of an armed citizenry in fighting off tyranny. The minutemen assembled at Lexington and Concord to prevent the Royal Fusiliers from seizing the munitions of the militia as General Gage had ordered (Order of General Gage, April 18,1775).
Nineteen million American adults suffer from a major case of depression (Web MD). That is a staggering one in every fifteen people (2 in our classroom alone). Holden Caulfield is clearly one of those people. Depression is a disease that leads to death but is also preventable. Psychology, stressful events, and prescription drugs are causes of depression. Stressful events brought on Holden’s depression. Holden has been trying to withstand losing a brother, living with careless parents, and not having many friends. The Catcher in the Rye is a book that takes us through the frazzled life of Holden Caulfield, who appears to be just a regular teen. But by hearing his thoughts and through heart-wrenching events in the book, the reader learns that Holden is not the innocent boy that he once appeared. In his book, The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger shows that Holden’s depression is not only affecting him, but also the people around him through Sally, Phoebe, and Sunny.
In the book, “The Catcher in The Rye” by J.D. Salinger, the main character is very strange in numerous ways. His name is Holden Caulfield and boy has he got something wrong with him. He rambles on and on about nonsense for the first 20-something chapters of the book. He only likes 3-4 people in the book. He smokes and drinks heavily at the ripe age of seventeen. He has been expelled out of numerous prep schools, and feels abandoned and not wanted. He has some sort of mental illness and I think I know what it is. I believe that Holden Caulfield has a mental illness known as Borderline Personality Disorder, also known as BPD. The reasoning for my thinking is that Holden’s actions match up with the symptoms of this illness and the isolation he
environments. Bill Clede ideas in his article seem to be guild by the idea of
However, his feelings suggest that the true reason for his depression is his loss of Innocence. When he was 13 years old, he lost his little brother Allie to leukemia. Allie meant a lot to Holden. He even becomes a symbol in the book. Allie is the one who keeps Holden from falling of the cliff, he’s the reason that he hasn’t lost his innocence yet. “Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating like a bastard—my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him.” (Sallinger) In this part, Allie plays the role as the Catcher in the Rye and keeps Holden from falling of the cliff. This is why i believe that Holden wants to become a “ Catcher in the Rye”. He wants to help people like Allie has helped him. He feels that it's what he’d meant to do with his
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, about one in four American adults suffer from a mental disorder. This means that 57.7 out of 217.8 million people over the age of 18 are ill; never mind that mental illnesses are the leading cause of disability in Canada and the United States. Holden Caulfield, the controversial main character of J.D Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye, spends much of the book wandering through the streets of New York City. Kicked out of boarding school for the umpteenth time, he does many odd things: he calls a prostitute, tries to befriend a taxi driver, drinks with middle aged women, and sneaks into his own house in the middle of the night. While many of these things seem outré, some may even go as far as to say that he is mentally disturbed. From a psychiatric standpoint, main character Holden Caulfield exhibits the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder (manic depression), and psychosis throughout the infamous novel Catcher in the Rye.
The U.S. should not have gun control laws. The Second Amendment to the Constitution states that, “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.” This amendment has been around since 1791, and there has been gun control almost as long as it's been around. The National Rifle Association is an advocate of the Second Amendment and an opponent of those who propose restrictions on guns. Even Presidents Reagan and Bush are members, and Nixon, Eisenhower, and Kennedy were also members. Why do people feel the need to own a handgun? One reason is heritage. For as long as this country has been around, there have been gun owners, to defend themselves and to hunt for food. Buying, owning, or carrying a handgun doesn't hurt anyone. Until a person commits a crime, he/she is free to choose what he/she wants to do. Even if guns were completely banned from the U.S.A., people would still find a way to get them. Criminals would get guns. They would have their way, and there would be nothing we could do about it. We would have no way to defend ourselves. What is gun control to you? To me, it is the unconstitutional regulation and banning of guns to try to keep the crime rates in this country down. Does it work? Some gun laws are okay and they may work to some extent, but not to the extent that was intended. As for most of these gun laws such as the Brady Law, it serves no purpose. It is only there to make our lawmaking bodies and those of us who are too naive to see the truth feel better. Do you really think that the Brady Law keeps handguns out of the hands of criminals?
history with a right to bear arms. Finally one can see the conflict of views
Holden seems to always be finding himself upset with something, someone, or someplace, and this does not change even at the very end of the book. While Holden Caulfield would have most-likely been looked at differently in the 1950s like in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, his behavior can be explained by the death of his brother Allie. He is not suffering from any mental illnesses, such as depression or bipolar disorder, but is instead just grieving losing his brother in an extreme way. Everybody grieves differently, and for Holden it includes not wanting to let go of his childhood, making radicalized decisions, and blaming his problems on the world around him. In the 1950s, Holden would
This debate has produced two familiar interpretations of the Second Amendment. Advocates of stricter gun control laws have tended to stress that the amendment’s militia clause guarantees nothing to the individual and that it only protects the states’ rights to be able to maintain organized military units. These people argue that the Second Amendment was merely used to place the states’ organized military forces beyond the federal government’s power to be able to disarm them. This would guarantee that the states would always have sufficient force at their command to abolish federal restraints on their rights and to resist by arms if necessary. T...
America is the most well armed nation in the world, with American citizens owning about 270 million of the world’s 875 million firearms (Marshall). Indeed, this is more than a quarter of the world’s registered firearms. The reason why Americans own so many guns is because of the Second Amendment, which 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.” (Rauch) This amendment guarantees U.S. citizens the right to have firearms. Since this amendment is relatively vague, it is up for interpretation, and is often used by gun advocates to argue for lenient gun laws. Hence, gun control is a frequently discussed controversial topic in American politics.
The second amendment states “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The Founding Fathers included this in the Bill of Rights because they feared the Federal Government might oppress the population if the people did not have the means to defend themselves as a nation or individuals.
The topic of gun control comes with a widely spilt crowd. Some people believe that gun control is essential, especially in today’s world. Some people think gun control will help with decreasing crime and making the nation a safer place for us to live. On the other hand, there are people who speak of anti-gun control. These people believe the right to bear arms would make our nation a safe place to live due to the fact that we would have protection. Do you think the Government has the right to make something illegal like the right to bear arm? In my opinion, the Government cannot simply because it will be an offence to our founding fathers, who gave us the national right to bear arm. Also, for making
Those parties in favor of gun ownership and the freedom to use and keep weapons, rely on the fact that the facility for such rights is preserved in the constitution. In this climate of growing violence, common with chaos and crime, gun activists feel more than ever that their position is justified. As citizens of the “Land of the Free” owning a gun is an
Everybody feels depressed at some time or another in their lives. However, it becomes a problem when depression is so much a part of a person's life that he or she can no longer experience happiness. This happens to the young boy, Holden Caulfield in J.D Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye. Mr. Antolini accurately views the cause of Holden's depression as his lack of personal motivation, his inability to self-reflect and his stubbornness to overlook the obvious which collectively results in him giving up on life before he ever really has a chance to get it started.
A study done by Michael L. Radelet says that we can never truly be one hundred percent certain of one’s innocence or guilt, even though to be accused of a crime the jury must be sure “beyond a reasonable doubt,” does not mean that there is still no doubt in the matter. Radelet gives an example of this by saying that because the probability of error is multiplicative, if we were to take one hundred inmates and execute them upon the notion of being at least ninety-five percent confident of their guilt, then we are leaving a five percent gap for error to occur. We would be willing to execute at least five innocent people on the chance that they all may be guilty (Radelet). Does society truly believe that it is worth the risk of taking an innocent person’s life just to make someone suffer, especially when we consider the essence of life so sacred and dear? There is a simple way to avoid this availing concern; sentence all those who are now deserving of capital punishment to a lifetime of prison without the possibility of parole. Prison is in no way a pleasant place to spend your time, and is an adequate punishment for those who commit murder. Today we have very high-security containment facilities for criminals. We can punish them without having to worry about whether or not an innocent person is being executed or if the act of execution opposes the constitution and a person’s right to