2nd Amendment
The 2nd Amendment to the United States Constitution protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It has been a subject of ongoing debate and controversy, with advocates arguing for the importance of individual gun ownership and opponents calling for stricter regulations to address public safety concerns. The interpretation and application of the 2nd Amendment continue to be significant issues in American politics.
7 Key excerpts on "2nd Amendment"
eBook - ePub- Robert J. Spitzer(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 2 The Second Amendment Meaning, Intent, Interpretation, and Consequences 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. —Second Amendment, US Constitution A NY CONSIDERATION OF THE GUN control debate inevitably turns to questions of the Constitution and the law. Consider, for example, this statement made by Republican Senator and 2016 presidential candidate Ted Cruz (Tex.) regarding his view of the meaning of the Second Amendment: “The 2nd Amendment… is a Constitutional right to protect your children, your family, your home, our lives, and to serve as the ultimate check against government tyranny—for the protection of liberty.” 1 Cruz’s view incorporates two ideas—that the amendment protects an individual right of personal self-protection, and that it somehow allows citizens to use violence against the government should it become “tyrannical.” Cruz made no mention of the militias referred to in the amendment. What are we to make of these two claims of rights? As with many aspects of constitutional interpretation, the debate over the meaning of the Second Amendment accelerated in the final decades of the twentieth century, especially within the legal community, as advocates of the so-called individualist view of the Second Amendment (discussed later in this chapter) achieved a monumental victory in 2008 when, for the first time in American history, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of D.C. v. Heller that the amendment protected a personal or individual right to own a handgun for personal self-protection in the home...
eBook - ePubAmerican Constitutional Law
Introductory Essays and Selected Cases
- Donald Grier Stephenson Jr., Alpheus Thomas Mason(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Accordingly, public policy in the colonial and early national years typically required most adult white males to possess arms and to bear them when called to duty. Ratification of the Constitution in 1789 impinged on these convictions in two important ways. The new national government possessed the authority both to create and maintain a professional standing army and to control the state-run militias when pressed into service for the Union. Against this backdrop, the Second Amendment thus reflects the concerns of Antifederalists that brought forth the rest of the Bill of Rights: Fear of an overreaching national power that might threaten liberty and displace the states. As the tragedies of mass shootings have sparked calls for increased firearms regulations, the Second Amendment has become one of the most politically charged parts of the Constitution. Opponents of such legislation look to the amendment as a declaration of a constitutionally protected individual right of gun ownership for sporting purposes and self-defense. On the other side, advocates of gun control view the amendment not as protecting an individual right against interference by government but as merely a guaranty of a collective right of the people of the states to organize for mutual self-defense. From this second perspective, the amendment is little more than an artifact from the late eighteenth century that has little bearing in an age of professional police forces and modern warfare when state militias survive today only as the National Guard. Despite its high political profile, the Second Amendment ironically has generated little litigation for the Supreme Court...
eBook - ePub- Maryam Ahranjani, Andrew G. Ferguson, Jamin B. Raskin(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- CQ Press(Publisher)
.... II We turn first to the meaning of the Second Amendment. A The Second Amendment provides: “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 interpreting this text, we are guided by the principle that “[t]he Constitution was written to be understood by the voters; its words and phrases were used in their normal and ordinary as distinguished from technical meaning. . . .” The two sides in this case have set out very different interpretations of the Amendment. Petitioners and today’s dissenting Justices believe that it protects only the right to possess and carry a firearm in connection with militia service. . . . Respondent argues that it protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home. . . . The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose. The Amendment could be rephrased, “Because a well regulated Militia is necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”. . . Operative Clause a. “Right of the People.” The first salient feature of the operative clause is that it codifies a “right of the people.” The unamended Constitution and the Bill of Rights use the phrase “right of the people” [to] refer to individual rights, not “collective” rights. . ...
- Christopher P. Banks, Christopher P. Banks(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...the chapter concludes with an analysis of the Supreme Court’s response to the case law developed by the lower courts. The long road to Heller and McDonald The Second Amendment is a unique element of the Bill of Rights in at least two respects. First, it contains a prefatory phrase that refers to a reason for protecting the substantive right with which it deals. Second, that phrase addresses an issue that caused considerable vexation during the Constitutional Convention and the ensuing ratification debates. The lineage of the Second Amendment can be traced back to the English Bill of Rights, which provided: “That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their Conditions and as allowed by Law.” 4 This provision reflected the outcome of a struggle between Parliament and the Crown for authority over military power in an insular country that did not need to maintain standing armies. for many years, England’s cash-strapped governments sought to keep up a militia consisting of most able-bodied men, who were required to supply their own arms and undergo part-time unpaid training. for foreign wars, the Crown had to ask Parliament for funds with which to pay and equip full-time soldiers. This arrangement broke down during the reign of Charles I, when King and Parliament began to contend with each other for control of the militia. During the ensuing civil wars, the population experienced military rule as well as concerted efforts by various political coalitions to disarm their political opponents and impose unpopular laws. the right to arms provision adopted after the Glorious Revolution reflected a belief that an armed citizenry was an important safeguard against the imposition of tyranny. 5 Before our revolution, Americans had managed their own colonial militias and experienced their own share of unpleasant relations with regular troops...
eBook - ePubThe Second Amendment and Gun Control
Freedom, Fear, and the American Constitution
- Kevin Yuill, Joe Street, Kevin Yuill, Joe Street(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...See Joyce Lee Malcolm, Guns and Violence: The English Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2002), 155–156, 159–161, 171–172. 3 Firearms Act, 1997, Firearms Act, no. 2, 1997. 4 “Ask the Police” at www.askthe.police.uk/. 5 US Supreme Court, District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), US Supreme Court, McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010). The idea that the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right but was only a guarantee that states could have a militia was argued from the 1960s and became a common view in law schools. The question had never been decided by the Supreme Court. Both recent decisions found the core of the amendment is the right of individuals to have arms for personal defense. 6 These “constitutional carry” states are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming. Several other states are considering changing to constitutional carry this year. 7 These eight include California in the west and New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland on the east coast, and Hawaii. The number of shall-issue states has increased year by year, leaving only these eight as holdouts. 8 www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/01/dean-weingarten/2015-record-year-for-firearms-sales-and-nics-background-checks/. 9 Blackstone, Commentaries, vol. 3, 3–4. 10 John Locke, An Essay Concerning the True, Original, Extent, and End of Civil Government (1690), par. 11. 11 An act for declaring the rights and liberties of the subject and settling the succession of the crown, 1689, 1 Will. & Mary, sess...
eBook - ePubThat Every Man Be Armed
The Evolution of a Constitutional Right. Revised and Updated Edition.
- Stephen P. Halbrook(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- University of New Mexico Press(Publisher)
...The further prediction that an enumeration of rights would be used to restrict those very rights by misconstruction or to deny the existence of unenumerated rights has certainly been applicable to the right to keep and bear arms. Nonetheless, the intent of the state conventions that requested adoption of a bill of rights and of the framers in Congress—who were all influenced by the classical vindications of natural rights, by English common law, and by the American revolutionary experience—was that the Second Amendment recognized the absolute individual right to keep arms in the home and to carry them in public....
- Thom Hartmann(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Berrett-Koehler Publishers(Publisher)
...But it unequivocally bore that idiomatic meaning only when followed by the preposition “against.”. . . When each word in the text is given full effect, the Amendment is most naturally read to secure to the people a right to use and possess arms in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia. So far as appears, no more than that was contemplated by its drafters or is encompassed within its terms. . . . Indeed, not a word in the constitutional text even arguably supports the Court’s overwrought and novel description of the Second Amendment as “elevat[ing] above all other interests” “the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” Even a previous Supreme Court chief justice, Nixon appointee Warren Berger, called the idea that the Second Amendment conferred an “individual right” to gun ownership a lie. Explicitly, he said the idea being promoted back when he was on the Court was “a fraud on the American public.” An early draft of the Second Amendment shows this brightly: it included a conscientious-objector provision for Quakers, letting them opt out of the militia...
