Summary: 5 pages. 6 sources. MLA format. This paper examines the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to prove that its purpose was not to allow ordinary citizens the “right to keep and bear arms”. The Second Amendment Introduction Some proponents of private gun ownership have stated that gun control is a fine idea -- except that the Second Amendment prohibits it. The Second Amendment has long been the defense of organizations
such as the National Rifle Association to justify the continuance of legal gun ownership for ordinary Americans. that the Second Amendment grants this right. This paper examines the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to establish that its purpose was not to allow ordinary citizens the “right to keep and bear arms”. However, it is not true
The Second Amendment The Second Amendment to 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.” It is this Amendment that proponents of private gun
ownership in the United States rely on to justify individual ownership of guns and arms. Yet, clearly the Second Amendment was never
intended to be a gun license for the entire American population. Gun-lovers throughout the United States have always focused their side of the debate on the final phrase of the Second Amendment. They
completely ignore the first part of the Amendment which states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State . . .” A straightforward reading of the entire Second Amendment
makes it clear that the right to keep and bear arms was intended to apply only to members of state-run, citizen militias. The Second Amendment was written this way because, after the Revolutionary War, the states insisted on the constitutional right to defend themselves in case the newly formed United States’ government became tyrannical and oppressive like the British royal rulers. majority of historical and legal research clearly shows that the Second Amendment was intended to guarantee that states could maintain armed forces to resist the federal government should it get out of control (ACLU, para.19). At the time the Second Amendment was The
drafted, the states demanded the right to keep an armed militia as an assurance that the United States’ government would not evolve into anything resembling the government of England (ACLU, para.14). Furthermore, militias in 1792 consisted of part-time citizensoldiers organized by individual states (ACLU, para.16). Its members
were civilians who kept arms and ammunition in their houses and barns, but there was State involvement in the regulation of these militias. At the time it was enacted, the drafters of the Second Amendment did not intend to encourage individual citizens to keep guns, but rather encouraged individual citizens to maintain guns if they were part of a regulated militia. Over time, states found it difficult to organize and finance their militias and, by the mid-1800s, militias had effectively ceased to exist (ACLU, para.17). Thus, beginning in 1903, Congress began to
pass legislation that would eventually transform state militias into what is now the National Guard (ACLU, para.17). Therefore, the original intent of the Second Amendment was to protect the right of states to develop and to maintain state regulated
militias.
The Second Amendment does not protect private gun ownership
that is unrelated to the maintenance of militia. Moreover, the Courts of the United States have consistently determined that the Second Amendment does not grant any comprehensive right to own a gun, nor does it prevent gun control. The U.S. Supreme
Court has heard cases involving this issue and has interpreted the Second Amendment on several occasions –- and has determined that the individual’s right to “keep and bear arms” is not a right granted by the constitution. There are four major cases where the Supreme Court has addressed this issue. Perhaps the most important Supreme Court Second Amendment In this case, two
case is U.S. v. Miller, which was decided in 1939.
men illegally shipped a sawed-off shotgun from Oklahoma to Arkansas, then claimed the Second Amendment prohibited the federal government from prosecuting them. The court emphatically disagreed with the
men’s position and determined that, in the absence of evidence tending to show that possession or use of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than 18 inches in length," which is the subject of regulation and taxation by the National Firearms Act, has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia, it cannot be said that the Second Amendment to the Federal Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument, or that the statute violates such constitutional provision. Ultimately, in Miller, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment had the obvious purpose of creating state militias, not of authorizing individual gun ownership. Two other important Supreme Court rulings are Presser v. Illinois and U.S. v. Cruikshank. In Presser, the Supreme Court decided that
the Second Amendment to the Constitution is a limitation only upon the power of Congress and the National Government, and not upon that of the States. In Cruikshank, the Supreme Court determined that the
right of bearing arms for a lawful purpose is not a right granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence; and the Second Amendment declares that it shall not be infringed, but this means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress. Furthermore, in a case that the Supreme Court declined to review, a federal appeals court in Illinois decided that the Second Amendment could not prevent a municipal government from banning handgun possession. In 1983, in the case Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove,
the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that present-day handguns could not be considered as weapons relevant to a collective militia. Thus, the court determined that the ordinance
banning handguns in the village protected the safety and health of the citizens, did not violate the residents' constitutional rights, and was a proper exercise of the village's police power. Therefore, these cases have collectively held that the Second Amendment affected only the federal government’s power to regulate gun ownership and had no effect on state gun control powers. These cases
are the foundation for current continuing legal decisions that the Second Amendment is not an impediment to rational gun control. Moreover, the overwhelming judicial view across the board is that the “right to keep and bear arms” pertains only to the right of states to form collective defenses or "well regulated militias." Unbeknownst to the general public, this is not even an unsettled area of the law. In fact, there have been no gun control laws that
have been declared unconstitutional by courts because they violated an individual’s rights to bear arms (Meyer, para.2). Nevertheless, according to writer Dick Meyer, the Second Amendment continues to be a controversial area of political and academic debate. According to Meyer, ”In politics, gun control Gun
advocates believe there is only a collective right to bear arms.
control opponents believe citizens have a right to keep arms every bit as profound as the rights of free speech, free assembly and free worship. These are matters of civic religion” (para.4).
The proponents of gun ownership clearly do not understand that the document that they rally behind to defend private gun ownership, truly does not encompass this objective.
Conclusion Today, the right to bear arms is little more than an anachronism intended to protect the right of the states to maintain militias and thereby insure the states' "freedom" and security against the central government. Clearly, at this date and time, in regards to private
individual gun ownership, the Second Amendment is irrelevant and out of date and certainly should not be used as a justification to allow private gun ownership. This paper has examined the text of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, the history of the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, as well as binding court decisions to establish that the purpose of the Second Amendment was not to allow ordinary citizens the “right to keep and bear arms”.
Bibliography
ACLU of Southern California. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Available at: . Retrieved May 12, 2003. Quilici v. Village of Morton Grove, 695 F.2d 261 (U.S. App. 1982). Meyer, Dick. “Gunning Down the 2nd Amendment”. 9 May 2002. CBS.com. Available at: . Retrieved May 12, 2003. Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252; 6 S. Ct. 580; 29 L. Ed. 615 (1886). United States v. Cruikshank, Et Al., 92 U.S. 542; 23 L. Ed. 588 (1875). United States v. Miller Et Al., 307 U.S. 174; 59 S. Ct. 816; 83 L. Ed. 1206 (1939).