2nd Amendment: Pros & Cons

The Second Amendment is our freedom and is there to protect you. So many people are against the Second Amendment, but it is not a bad thing. It is our right as Americans to bear arms and I feel people punish others for that. People think weapons are scary because we all know that there is so much violence in the world today. I just want people to think; why be scared of something that protects you, be scared of the person with the weapon. They are in full control, not the weapon.

The Second Amendment is one of the 10 amendments that form the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791 by the U.S. Congress. The “militia” was during the Revolutionary War era, which simply was a group of men that would protect. However, according to history.com “opponents of a strong central government argued that this federal army deprived states of their ability to defend themselves against oppression”. They were all afraid Congress would abuse its constitutional power by failing to keep militiamen equipped with adequate arms. The U.S. Constitution was officially ratified by nine of the thirteen states shortly after and that is when James Madison proposed the Second Amendment to empower these state militias. Americans have questioned the meaning of the Second Amendment, and whether it protects us, people.

The majority of gun owners say that having a gun makes them feel safer. According to a national survey “half of the gun owners (48%) volunteer that the main reason they own a gun is for protection; just 32% say they have a gun primarily for hunting and even fewer cite other reasons, such as target shooting. In 1999, 49% said they owned a gun mostly for hunting, while just 26% cited protection as the biggest factor”. The survey by the Pew Research Center found that safety also is a major concern among the majority of Americans who don’t have guns. Nearly 58% of those in households without guns said, “they would be uncomfortable having a gun in their homes”. The usefulness of guns for most owners is simply protection, it is there just in case something happens. Having a gun gives you a chance to protect yourself just in case someone breaks into your home, and the chances of that happening are very low but not unheard of.

A lot of Americans don’t like guns. From a survey that was taken a lot of the people that don’t like guns grew up in a household without them. Most find them unsafe and don’t see where they actually protect you. They look at all the mass shootings around the world and automatically dislike guns. Most families don’t own guns due to the fact they think they are scary or they have a family with children and don’t want guns around their kids. The thing is you just have to know how to use one and when to use one. With the proper precautions, guns are perfectly safe. A world without guns would drop the rate of shootings and suicides, but what would we protect ourselves with. Approximately 500,000 people around the world are killed by guns each year. Guns are safe but it all depends on who has them. All the killings in the world are by people who shouldn’t have access to guns and those people are making it very difficult for the ones that are responsible for their firearms. The way I look at it is if all guns disappeared, Americans will find something else to abuse. Abuse more drugs, or whatever else they can get their hands on. Getting rid of guns will not solve a lot of problems but will make other things worse.

Dr. John Lott researched the impact that the right to own firearms has on other potentially violent crimes in society. He discovered that “the presence of gun laws that support ownership reduce homicide levels by roughly 9%, aggravated assault by 7%, and sexual assault, including rape, by 5%. Lott also found that positive gun laws like the Second Amendment can lower the rate of robberies in society by up to 3%”. The Texas Concealed Handgun Association researched the levels of crime committed in the demographic of legal concealed carry weapon permit holders compared to the general population. The Texas Concealed Handgun Association found that “someone approved to carry a handgun in public while concealed is about six times less likely to commit a crime than the rest of the population when non-violent offenses were considered. Because of the stringent background investigation that occurs in most states for concealed carry permits, most adults in this situation tend to be law-abiding citizens”.

The Second Amendment allows for responsible ownership. If someone fails to be responsible with their firearm in the United States then that is their fault, the fault doesn’t lie with the Second Amendment. It is an issue we must all address within our society and within ourselves. There are ways to allow anyone to own a gun for legal purposes without getting permission from the government while still asking people to know how to use it responsibly. We need to remember that a gun is not a toy, that is how a lot of people in this world look at guns. Instead, we need to look at guns as a tool. We are responsible for showing that guns are perfectly safe but instead people do the total opposite.

The Second Amendment is a symbol of our freedom. Even if people don’t want to own a firearm, having the ability to purchase one if they change their minds is an important part of society. When you have permission to own a gun, then it becomes an effective check-and-balance on the rest of society. That’s why when gun control measures come up there is a lot of resistance.

“Since America called for a repeal of the Second Amendment in 2013, accidental and intentional deaths from guns in the United States have increased from 80 to 100 per day”. Many states have passed effective gun control laws to help cut down gun violence, but states with the highest death rates from guns are those with the most lenient laws. You would think that it would be the other way around but it’s not. The United States is hindered in establishing effective gun control laws by federal and state constitutional roadblocks. “For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to enact gun control legislation,” Stevens wrote. That changed in 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller that there is an individual right to bear arms. Experts say there are two ways to go about repealing any proposed amendment. “The first process requires that any proposed amendment to the Constitution be passed by both the House and Senate with two-thirds majorities. It would then need to be ratified by three-fourths of the 50 states- or 38 of them”. The second option for repealing an amendment is “to hold a Constitutional Convention. In that case, two-thirds of state legislatures would need to call for such a convention, and states would write amendments that would then need to be ratified by three-fourths of the states”.

It is possible to change the Constitution this way but it has never happened since the Constitution was ratified. “In the history of the United States, the only amendment that’s ever been repealed is Prohibition. The 21st Amendment, in 1933, repealed the 18th Amendment, of 1919, which prohibited the making, transportation, and sale of alcohol. It is very unlikely that the Second Amendment could ever be repealed”. Kevin McMahon said, “It’s hard enough for gun control legislation to be passed now in the Congress which requires simply a simple majority”. Stevens’ call for repeal is not the first time a former member of the Supreme Court has said something against the Second Amendment. As the Atlantic reports, former Chief Justice Warren Burger said in 1991: “If I were writing the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn’t be any such thing as the Second Amendment.

Gun Violence has become the real reality of life in the United States. According to data from the Pew Research Center, “44% of Americans say that they know someone who has been shot, and another 23% report that a gun has been used to threaten or intimidate them or a family member”. More than 300,000 people were killed in the United States from 2008 through 2017, meaning that a single person is killed with a gunshot in this country every 15 minutes. Gun violence rates vary widely from state to state, as does the character of that violence. Some states report low rates of gun-related homicides and higher rates of gun-related suicides, while some states have the total opposite experience. There are so many states that are high in gun-related deaths but Alaska, Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi rank in the top four highest rates of gun-related deaths. More than 35% of gunshot deaths in the United States are gun homicides, meaning very close to 33 people are murdered with a gun every day.

The largest category of gun deaths in the United States is suicide. Suicide by a gunshot accounted for 61% of all gun deaths from 2008 through 2017. During that period a rate of 6.61-gun suicides was happening per every 100,000 people. Unintentional shootings accounted for approximately 2% of gun deaths from 2008 through 2017. Most of the unintentional shootings involved children. An unintentional death occurred every 16 hours, taking the lives of over 5,000 people. An analysis by Brady United to Prevent Gun Violence found that “more than 200 people survive a gunshot wound every day, often suffering injuries that lead to a lifetime of health complications”. According to data from the FBI, from 2008 through 2017, “more than 1.5 million aggravated assaults involved a firearm, with rates varying significantly across the states”. “The NRA says we shouldn’t have any laws restricting gun ownership because criminals don’t follow laws. By that logic, we should get rid of laws criminalizing murder, assault, and robbery because criminals don’t follow those laws either. It's an absurd argument and shouldn’t be given the time of day,” Feinstein said. There are a lot of things that can reduce gun violence. We could reduce easy access to any type of dangerous weapons by requiring an entire background check without any loopholes that would leave anything out. Reduce firearm access to underage individuals who are at high risk of harming themselves or others. This includes “keeping guns out of the hands of those who have been violent toward their partners and families, and those with previous violent convictions, whether through expanding lethality assessment and background checks or supporting domestic violence bills, and gun violence restraining orders”. Hold the gun industry accountable and ensure there is adequate oversight over the marketing and sales of guns and ammunition. Five percent of gun dealers sell more than 90% of guns used in crimes and must be accountable for the code of conduct. States can pass laws requiring sellers to obtain state licenses. Engage responsible gun dealers and owners in solutions. Insist on mandatory training and licensing for owners. The training should include “recurring education to renew permits, with the graduated licensing process at least as stringent as for driver’s licenses. Require safe and secure gun storage”. Of course, “private sellers” are not required to have a background check, which makes it harder to lower gun violence since you have sellers out here everywhere that are hard to track selling guns without a license. An estimated 40 percent of gun transfers that occur every year in the United States- more than 6 million-gun transfers- originate from private sellers. They often congregate at gun shows or sell guns online, which again makes it harder to catch them.

Since the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was passed in 1993 to mandate all licensed gun dealers perform background checks, the “FBI has conducted more than 150 million background checks in connection with gun sales, blocking gun transfers in more than 1.7 million instances. But for the system to work better, states must provide the federal government with the names of all the individuals who are prohibited from owning firearms for inclusion in the nationwide database”. States all over the United States have been slow to provide these records, especially records regarding the people that are barred from owning guns due to mental illness. “Ten states have failed to provide any mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and 18 others have submitted fewer than 100 records since the creation of the system in 1999. Without states’ cooperation in submitting these records to the database, individuals who are dangerously mentally ill and pose a substantial threat to the community”. Under federal law, individuals convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence are disqualified from possessing firearms. Because domestic violence occurs so often with family or in relationships, removing firearms from these situations is a crucial tool for protecting victims from serious injury or death. “Federal law prohibits the sale of guns to someone subject to a court order restraining him or her from harassing, stalking or threatening an intimate partner”. Nothing in the current law prevents known or suspected terrorists from clearing a background check and purchasing guns. And some of them are doing just that. According to the Government Accountability Office “between February 2004 and December 2010, there were 1,119 instances when known or suspected terrorists on the government’s Terrorist Watchlist purchased guns or explosives from federally licensed dealers”.

People are getting assault rifles meant for the military to do all these shootings, which they should not have access to. “These assault rifles, capable of firing more than 30 or more bullets in mere seconds, are legally available for purchase in most U.S. states since federal law banning the sale of such weapons expired in 2004. There are so many laws put in place for the purchase of guns but not everyone follows those laws”. There is a lot that we still can do to reduce gun violence but it is not as easy as what everyone thinks that it is. If the sellers don’t follow the rules, they need to follow then it is not going to do much good. The private sellers don’t help at all, because you can’t really see where they’re at and who they are selling to. Even if places followed the rules they are supposed to and if we added more laws to follow there will still be private sellers out there. There will always be a way someone can get a firearm that is legally not supposed to happen. I’m not saying that gun violence won’t go down if people started obeying the laws and rules because it might but there will still always be gun violence in the world. Whether it is really small or really big, there will always be violence.

Like I said before it is not the weapon that is bad, it is the person with the weapon that makes it bad. People have the mindset that weapons are bad, but it’s all about the person who owns it. Don’t let something scare you that shouldn’t. At the end of the day, we need the Second Amendment for our protection. Not everyone who owns a firearm is bad. Really think about what it means and what it does before you say you don’t like it and you want to get rid of it.

Work Cited Page

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