The Second Amendment

This amendment is one of the most highly debated about amendments.  The second amendment to the constitution guarantees the right of the people to keep and bear arms.  When looking at this from the perspective of the framers of the constitution, this was vitally important to America's survival as a new country.  Think about it:  you have a newly established country that just got done fighting a taxing war, and there are already enemies.  Those enemies would be watching like hawks to see any chance of being able to crush the new country.  So it only makes sense that the everyday person should have the right to keep and bear arms.  That way, if someone did try to invade they could protect themselves and put up resistance to the invading force.  Now today, you could argue that we aren't under imminent threat of invasion.  You could also argue that due to increased crime rates based on population expansion, owning a gun is now more important than ever to protect yourself.  Either way, I personally don't see a problem with people owning guns for protection purposes.  You can't stop people from unlawfully using guns.  The only thing you can do is put laws into place to punish those who do.



Reaction:

This video does a good job of explaining the mindset of those who framed the constitution.  I like the fact that it also elaborates on the fact that it was to fight against oppressive government.  It keeps the populace from being taken over by the government, which I feel is crucial to the survival of this country.  If the government takes over, the people eventually have no choice but to start a revolution and overthrow it (as seen over many examples across human history).  If we are forced to overthrow the government, we fall back to page 1 and have to start over.

Article

EDITORIAL

The Second Amendment’s Reach

Published: March 1, 2010

NY Times

Two years ago, the Supreme Court struck down parts of the District of Columbia’s gun-control law. On Tuesday, the court will consider whether that decision should apply everywhere in the country, not just in the federal territory of the nation’s capital.

We disagreed strongly with the 2008 decision, which took an expansive and aggressive view of the right to bear arms. But there is an even broader issue at stake in the new case: The Supreme Court’s muddled history in applying the Constitution to states and cities. It should make clear that all of the protections of the Bill of Rights apply everywhere.

McDonald v. Chicago is a challenge to a law that makes it extremely difficult to own a handgun within Chicago’s city limits. The challengers rely on the court’s 5-to-4 ruling in 2008, which recognized an individual right under the Second Amendment to carry guns for self-defense. But that decision left open an important question. The Bill of Rights once was largely thought to be a set of limitations on the federal government. Does the right to bear arms apply against city and state governments as well?

Since states and localities do far more gun regulation than the federal government, the court’s answer will have a powerful impact. The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago, relying on 19th-century precedents, ruled that the Second Amendment does not apply to states and cities.

Under the doctrine of “selective incorporation,” the Supreme Court has ruled on a case-by-case basis that most, but so far not quite all, of the Bill of Rights apply to states and cities. The court should dispense with the selectivity and make clear that states and cities must respect the Bill of Rights.

To justify incorporation, the court has relied on the 14th Amendment, which was enacted after the Civil War to ensure equality for newly freed slaves. The amendment has two relevant clauses: the due process clause that requires government to act with proper respect for the law, and the privileges or immunities clause, which is more focused on protecting substantive individual rights.

The logical part of the amendment to base incorporation on is the privileges or immunities clause, but a terrible 1873 Supreme Court ruling blocked that path and the court has relied since then on the due process clause.

A group of respected constitutional scholars and advocates is asking the court to switch to the privileges or immunities clause as the basis for applying the Bill of Rights to states and cities. That would be truer to the intent of the founders, and it could open the door to a more robust constitutional jurisprudence that would be more protective of individual rights.

It is unlikely that the court will delve directly into the gun issues. If it decides to apply the Second Amendment to cities, it would probably send the case back to a lower court to evaluate the Chicago law. If that happens, the justices should guide the court in a way that makes clear that reasonable gun restrictions will still be upheld.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has made clear that it is very concerned about the right to bear arms. There is another right, however, that should not get lost: the right of people, through their elected representatives, to adopt carefully drawn laws that protect them against other people’s guns.

Reaction:

This article made me think quite a bit.  What I found most interesting was that the supreme court has not yet applied the bill of rights to the states and cities.  I find it quite odd that only "some" of the bill of rights should apply against states and cities (the article states the the rights were originally to protect us from the federal government).  Even though there is a distinction in the constitution that separates the states from the federal government, I believe that states and cities are still part of the government, and should have to respect the bill of rights the same as the federal government does.