pro second amendment essay

The 'scope' of the argument: Why the Second Amendment matters

The U.S. Constitution's guarantee of the right to bear arms has been a primary conversation topic among Americans in 2020. As uncertainty and fear have plagued the world over the last eight months, there has been a surge in gun sales nationwide — many of them to first-time owners.

Austin and Danielle, one young couple in Utah, had always talked about owning a firearm. Austin grew up in a city where gun ownership was less common, but Danielle grew up in a small town where gun ownership was normal. They both said the events of 2020 lead them to buy a firearm.

“We always talked about having a gun,' Austin said. 'I thought they were probably important to have for self-defense. Once COVID-19 hit , it made getting one feel like an important purchase to make.”

The couple bought their gun in early April. While they believe in gun ownership, they wanted to keep their last name anonymous to avoid the negative stigma some associate with gun owners.

“I feel like a lot of people have a mental image of gun owners as uneducated or having low IQs,' Danielle said. 'I do feel like most gun owners are responsible and only want them for recreation and self-defense purposes, but some people think they are hillbillies.”

The two cited the case of the Orem wildfires in mid-October, which were caused by target practice at a local gun range. They also mentioned a few other reasons they didn't want to be labeled as 'gun owners.'

“We wanted to remain anonymous because we didn’t want to be targeted for our political beliefs or because we choose to own a gun,' Austin said. 'Remaining anonymous is a safe choice. That’s the reason I bought a gun — it’s something to protect my family and keep us safe.”

While some Americans have sought to restrict gun ownership, for many others it is a cherished right they work to protect. According to The New York Times , demand for guns has surged since the start of the pandemic in March and hasn’t let up all year. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) recorded an estimated 28 million background checks were requested from January to the end of September.

Jeffrey Denning, a Salt Lake City Police detective, teaches firearm safety classes to private parties. He has seen a dramatic increase in people wanting to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

“One gun store owner I talked to said the day after the Utah earthquake on March 13th, he received the most sales he had ever gotten,” Denning said. “After that, sales started going through the roof. The numbers are off the charts.”

According to the data reported by the NICS, the first spike (3.7 million background checks) in firearm demand happened in March likely because of the pandemic. The second spike (3.9 million background checks) was larger and occurred in June — right after acts of civil unrest began in major American cities.

“ People should be able to protect themselves individually and collectively,” Denning said. “We should be able to preserve our freedoms — this lets us have agency and a land of liberty.”

Denning said that while firearms are certainly good for personal protection, the reason the Second Amendment is considered a right is more complex than that.

“The Second Amendment was included in the Constitution so the government could not take over,” Denning said. 'It’s to serve against government encroachments. The amendments were developed because of what the founding fathers saw in other parts of the world.”

Most historians agree that this was the premise of the Second Amendment. But some people have grown increasingly wary of the potential dangers of an armed population. Because of this fear, there has been heated debate in recent years over whether to update or reform the Second Amendment.

Lucy Williams, an assistant professor of political philosophy, said the conflict was most pronounced in the 2008 Supreme Court case D.C. v. Heller.

“For some time, there was a debate about whether the prefatory clause ‘A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State’ was intended to limit the right to bear arms or if it merely explained why the right is important,” Williams said. “The debate is now largely settled.”

Williams said reformers proposed that the Constitution only protects a right to bear arms in relation to military service. People who took the other position argued the right was not connected to military service. The Supreme Court sided with the latter position.

After this Supreme Court decision, it seems that the debate has shifted. Instead of asking whether individuals should be allowed to have firearms, the debate is focused on whether the government has the ability to regulate and restrict specific weapons from entering the public sphere.

This threat of potential regulation has made some Americans nervous, and conservative politicians say the Second Amendment is under attack, or will be eliminated because of their political opponents. Williams said this is not likely.

“Although the scope of (the Second Amendment) may change, it’s hard to imagine that the right could ever be eliminated entirely,” Williams said.

Though reform may happen in the future, more people are making use of their Second Amendment right. Background checks, first-time gun purchases and training classes are increasing in demand. It remains to be seen whether gun sales will trend downward anytime soon.

“If you haven’t had a gun in 70 years, and are only interested in one because you’re scared, there is no reason to buy one now,” Denning said. “You are going to be fine.”

Despite this, Denning said individuals who have considered buying a gun and want to educate themselves should do so.

“It’s ignorant and foolish not to have a plan for preparation and protection,” Denning said. “You can think all day long that something won’t happen ‘here’ or ‘to you’ but if it does, you’re not going to be prepared.”

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17 Big Pros and Cons of the 2nd Amendment

During the initial days of the United States as an independent nation, the founding fathers worked together to form a governing set of laws that would apply to all people. It would begin with the Constitution, and then proceed to the Bill of Rights.

The Bill of Rights is a set of amendments that are treated as if they were part of the original Constitution. Each amendment is given a number under American law, and then implemented immediately once three-quarters of the state’s ratify any new ideas. One of the most important amendments in the U.S. is the Second Amendment, which states the following.

“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.”

The founding fathers adapted the wording of the Second Amendment from clauses that were nearly identical in some of the original state constitutions that were written during the 18th century. Recent rulings by the Supreme Court have set the precedent that all people in good standing can own a gun or guns without being part of a recognized state militia.

“The rifle itself has no moral stature, since it has no will of its own,” Jeff Cooper wrote in Art of the Rifle. “Naturally, it may be used by evil men for evil purposes, but there are more good men than evil, and while the latter cannot be persuaded to the path of righteousness by propaganda, they can certainly be corrected by good men with rifles.”

Is this perspective correct? Or should Americans work to embrace more gun control legislation that could reduce the ownership of weapons that could create mass casualties?

Here are some of the pros and cons of the Second Amendment to consider.

List of the Pros of the Second Amendment

1. Gun ownership works to reduce other types of crime in society. Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “I’m all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let’s start with typewriters.” The fact will always be that a gun is a tool and nothing more. Can it be used to kill someone? Yes. Is it possible to inflict mass casualties with certain types of firearms? Yes. It can also be useful for hunting to provide food for one’s family. Guns can protect you when someone breaks into your home. People use them to drive off predators that try to take their livestock. Owning a gun can even reduce homicide numbers, sexual assault, and aggravated assault by at least 5%.

2. The Second Amendment offers people a chance to defend themselves. According to information published by the National Sheriffs’ Association, the average amount of time for a school shooting to take place is 12.5 minutes, but it takes police officers 18 minutes to respond to the first calls that come across emergency lines. Active shooter incidents in all locations, but especially schools, have risen at an alarming rate in recent years. During the entire decade of the 1960s, there was one incident. In 2015, there were 55 active shooter incidents in American schools. As Cooper wrote, the only choice that we can make is one that allows us to protect ourselves. We can’t stop bad people from getting their hands on a gun to use it for evil purposes, but we can help good people find ways to stop them with the same tool.

3. It reinforces the laws of the Constitution by its mere presence in the Bill of Rights. Alan Dershowitz may not be a fan favorite of every conservative in the United States, but he does offer this observation about the Second Amendment. “Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it’s not an individual right or that it’s too much of a public safety hazard don’t see the danger in the big picture. They’re courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don’t like.”

Guns might be controversial in some ways because of the ease that they inflict damage, but it is also because of this tool that people in the U.S. have the freedoms that are available to them. When you start to erode one granted right, it does not take long for more of them to experience the same outcome.

4. The Second Amendment allows the average person to defend their country. In Priority, Aaron Powell makes this observation about the Second Amendment. “When the Chinese invade our country, who do you want to depend on? The over-extended police force and the National Guard? Or the next-door neighbor who is a former Marine and has enough guns and ammunition for your entire block?”

The entire point of the Second Amendment from the perspective of the founding fathers is still valid. When you own a gun, then it is more difficult to take away what you have earned in life than if you did not own this weapon. People will think twice (or more times) about trying to take something from you, including domestic and foreign governments, if you have the capacity to defend yourself adequately.

5. It allows for a well-regulated militia to be part of U.S. culture. The focus on the Second Amendment is often on the right of gun ownership, but it is also essential to note that there is the right for states to have a well-regulated militia because of this addition to the Bill of Rights. Even though we have numerous levels of law enforcement that work to serve and protect our communities, there may still come a time when there is a need to keep the peace in other ways. This option allows for states to develop their own defensive resources without costing taxpayers in other locations any money to do so. If you need to defend your home for any reason, all you need to do is get together, form a militia, and follow whatever state rules are in place for organization.

6. You must qualify to own a gun in the United States already. There are already regulations in place that make it impossible for anyone to walk into a gun shop to make a purchase. Any store that sells firearms must use the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, called NICS, to see if there are any records in place that would prevent a customer from owning a gun. This system scans three different databases to ensure there are no matches. Anyone declared mentally unfit, convicted of a felony, or receives a misdemeanor sentence of 2+ years will not qualify for the purchase. Lying on the form in an attempt to purchase the gun is also considered an illegal act which could strip you of the firearm when discovered.

7. The Second Amendment offers more checks-and-balances for society. When the founding fathers creating the structure of the American government, they wanted to make sure that no one branch of it could hold more power than the other. The system of checks-and-balances ensures that the executive, legislative, and judicial branches must work together to the benefit of society.

The Second Amendment offers this same benefit for the average person in their daily routines. It is a way to protect your individual liberties to ensure that you are not deprived of the right to pursue happiness. “The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted,” said James Madison. Gun ownership is a way to ensure that the government is obliged to control itself in addition to supervising the governed.

List of the Cons of the Second Amendment

1. It does not provide for the safe usage and implementation of a gun in society. “Saying gun control hurts our freedom is a false argument amounting to propaganda,” said DaShanne Stokes. “Gun laws don’t curtail freedom any more than speed limits or seat belts. You still get to drive your car and have guns. We’re just trying to save lives as you do.” Although the Second Amendment does allow for the private ownership of guns according to the current interpretation offered by the Supreme Court, it does not contain provisions that require the safe use of this tool. That level of implementation is left to the states, which means there is a patchwork series of laws that gun owners must follow to stay in compliance.

2. There is no guarantee that a good guy with a gun is going to be around. DaShanne Stokes has also said that gun violence in the United States is not a Republican or Democrat problem, but an American problem – and one that requires an American solution. “When a country with less than 5% of the world’s population has nearly 50% of the world’s privately-owned guns and makes up nearly a third of the world’s mass shootings, it’s time to stop saying guns make us safer,” he said.

Even though there are plenty of stories about a good guy with a gun stopping a crime that you can find, there are also more than 14,000 homicides attributed to firearms each year in the United States. That means 4.5 deaths per 100,000 population are because of guns.

3. Gun ownership comes with great risk to the owner’s household. There are plenty of good reasons to own a gun in today’s American society, but there are also a few reasons why some families believe that the rights given under the Second Amendment are not something they want to use. That is because up to 95% of the suicides that occur with a firearm are potentially preventable if the gun wasn’t present in the home. Households that own just one gun carry a 7 times higher risk of experiencing premature death than those without one.

Even the states which have the least amount of controls places on gun ownership see homicide rates that are more than double those of states with the most extensive restrictions. The problem with a firearm is that this tool doesn’t offer many second chances.

4. There are multiple ways to deter crime other than gun ownership. In Guns Part 2, Aaron Powell makes this observation.

• “So, disturbed kids are taking guns to school and killing teachers and classmates. We better make sure kids can’t get guns.”
• So, disturbed kids are taking guns to school and killing teachers and classmates. We better find out what’s making these kids want to kill, fix that, and then they won’t want to use guns to kill teachers and classmates.”

Both sides of the Second Amendment debate can quote statistics which support their argument. There are stories about how gun ownership can save lives, just as there are times when it takes lives. Saying that guns are the only way to deter crime is laziness. There are multiple facets of protection that we can implement every day if we are willing to take bold steps to protect ourselves, our loved ones, and our communities. Can guns stop a crime? Sure. So can an alarm system, an airlock system in schools, metal detectors, and many more methods. We cannot have tunnel vision on just one outcome.

5. It creates the potential for a domestic arms race. “If Jesus Christ himself were to come down off the cross and grant you one wish, would you opt for a world without guns – or the one we live in now?” asks Quentin Bufogle. “If every gun owner truly feared for their life and liberty, the answer would be obvious.”

When we push toward a world of gun ownership, then we are creating a society where good and evil are both racing toward a place where each feel like it can be a dominant force. This perspective is what fueled the nuclear race during the Cold War, and it is also what causes some people to stockpile firearms. There are an estimated 89-100 guns for every 100 Americans, but only up to 29% of households actually own one. 14% of owners have between 8 to 140 guns in their possession, accounting for 50% of civilian ownership.

6. We already know that the current gun control laws don’t work. According to reporting from The New York Times, only 8 states have laws which provide an explicit mechanism so that people who are suspected of owning guns in violation of their prohibitions are required to hand them over. Some of these laws allow, but do not require, the police to seek a court order for confiscation.

Authorities in Chicago knew for over 4 years that Gary Martin was a felon with a violent history, yet did nothing to make sure that he surrendered his Smith and Wesson handgun with a laser sight. He used that weapon to kill five of his co-workers in Aurora, IL, in February 2019. It would be helpful to enforce the laws on our books to ensure that we are doing all that we can to stop the bad guys with guns.

7. The Second Amendment increases the cost of law enforcement. Open-carry laws for gun ownership because of the Second Amendment create a phobia about this tool that increases the amount of resources that law enforcement must receive each year. 40% of Americans already say that one of their biggest fears is that they will end up being the victim of a mass shooting. Firearms are already the second-leading cause of death for American children and teens. Women are 21 times more likely to be killed with a gun in the United States than they are in other high-income countries.

Because there are so many guns on the streets, even if they are owned by a minority of the population, the resources dedicated to law enforcement activities are that much higher. Even a slight reduction in this cost could be directed toward something more useful, like free firearm education programs.

8. This amendment has seen inconsistent application in the law. Before the recent Heller ruling set the precedent for individual ownership as a right, the judicial system interpreted the Second Amendment as applying to militias only. That meant no one had the right to travel with their gun across state lines. The common law standard was that there was a duty to retreat if someone wanted to take your things. If you lived in the city, then a loaded firearm was banned from being in your home.

Once upon a time, you even had to swear a loyalty oath as an American to have the right to own a firearm. Refusing to take that pledge meant that your right to gun ownership disappeared. It is an inaccurate statement to say that the U.S. has never had gun restrictions in place before. What we are doing is creating inconsistent case law based on current political desires.

9. There is no right to own a firearm if you cannot afford the cost. One of the unique aspects of the Second Amendment is that it doesn’t mention the cost of ownership as part of your individual rights as an American. There is nothing that would stop Congress from passing a law which required a minimum price for this item, similar to the expense one must pay to obtain a passport or a driver’s license. The only thing that the Bill of Rights guarantees is that if you can afford the cost of a gun and there are no other restrictions in place for you, then this is an opportunity that you can have.

10. The Second Amendment does not exclude specific actions, behaviors, or choices. The Second Amendment would be arguably more powerful if it created specific restrictions to ownership based on high-risk behaviors. Several demographics, including teens with a history of violence, can still purchase firearms despite their history of choices. Even people convicted of a gun crime can still buy more of them if they are not convicted of a felony and their misdemeanor sentence is less than 2 years in some states.

One Final Thought on the Second Amendment

Most people read the key pros and cons of the Second Amendment in the form of an echo chamber. They will see the areas in which they agree and use that information to support their position while dismissing everything else. Although it is true that guns have long been part of the culture in the United States, we cannot be honest with ourselves by saying that we treat this tool differently than other elements of life.

When terrorists flew airplanes into the twin towers, the Pentagon, and Flight 93 was retaken by passengers to crash so it couldn’t do more damage, the legislative response from the U.S. government was immediate. The focus is on the outside threats more than it is the domestic ones. We cannot change the actions of a person with evil intent when they get their hands on a gun, but what we can do is initiate an extensive, accurate, and mandatory screening and licensing process which allows each person to access their right to own a gun if they should so choose.

You cannot legally drive without a driver’s license that you earn by proving you have the skills and knowledge to be successful. You must also renew that license periodically. Some states make a similar requirement for those who wish to have a concealed carry permit. Extending that process to all gun ownership with minimal fees to process the paperwork seems like a common-sense compromise that could help to reduce the amount of violence that is present in U.S. society.

The status quo is not working. It is time to do something.

Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — 2Nd Amendment — The Second Amendment: Origins, Intent, and Relevance

The Second Amendment: Origins, Intent, and Relevance

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Published: Mar 8, 2024

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Second Amendment - List of Free Essay Examples And Topic Ideas

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The first amendment, interactive constitution: the second amendment’s meaning.

February 19, 2018 | by NCC Staff

In this essay from the National Constitution Center’s Interactive Constitution project, scholars Nelson Lund and Adam Winkler look at the Second Amendment’s origins and the modern debates about it.

In the Interactive Constitution, scholars from across the legal and philosophical spectrum interact with each other to explore the meaning of each provision of the Constitution. They are selected with guidance from leaders of the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society—two prominent constitutional law organizations that represent different viewpoints on the Constitution. Pairs of scholars find common ground, writing a joint statement of what they agree upon about that provision’s history and meaning. Then the scholars write individual statements describing their divergent views on that part of the Constitution. For more about the project, go to https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution

Modern debates about the Second Amendment have focused on whether it protects a private right of individuals to keep and bear arms, or a right that can be exercised only through militia organizations like the National Guard. This question, however, was not even raised until long after the Bill of Rights was adopted.

Many in the Founding generation believed that governments are prone to use soldiers to oppress the people. English history suggested that this risk could be controlled by permitting the government to raise armies (consisting of full-time paid troops) only when needed to fight foreign adversaries. For other purposes, such as responding to sudden invasions or other emergencies, the government could rely on a militia that consisted of ordinary civilians who supplied their own weapons and received some part-time, unpaid military training.

The onset of war does not always allow time to raise and train an army, and the Revolutionary War showed that militia forces could not be relied on for national defense. The Constitutional Convention therefore decided that the federal government should have almost unfettered authority to establish peacetime standing armies and to regulate the militia.

This massive shift of power from the states to the federal government generated one of the chief objections to the proposed Constitution. Anti-Federalists argued that the proposed Constitution would take from the states their principal means of defense against federal usurpation. The Federalists responded that fears of federal oppression were overblown, in part because the American people were armed and would be almost impossible to subdue through military force.

Implicit in the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists were two shared assumptions. First, that the proposed new Constitution gave the federal government almost total legal authority over the army and militia. Second, that the federal government should not have any authority at all to disarm the citizenry. They disagreed only about whether an armed populace could adequately deter federal oppression.

The Second Amendment conceded nothing to the Anti-Federalists’ desire to sharply curtail the military power of the federal government, which would have required substantial changes in the original Constitution. Yet the Amendment was easily accepted because of widespread agreement that the federal government should not have the power to infringe the right of the people to keep and bear arms, any more than it should have the power to abridge the freedom of speech or prohibit the free exercise of religion.

Much has changed since 1791. The traditional militia fell into desuetude, and state-based militia organizations were eventually incorporated into the federal military structure. The nation’s military establishment has become enormously more powerful than eighteenth century armies. We still hear political rhetoric about federal tyranny, but most Americans do not fear the nation’s armed forces and virtually no one thinks that an armed populace could defeat those forces in battle. Furthermore, eighteenth century civilians routinely kept at home the very same weapons they would need if called to serve in the militia, while modern soldiers are equipped with weapons that differ significantly from those generally thought appropriate for civilian uses. Civilians no longer expect to use their household weapons for militia duty, although they still keep and bear arms to defend against common criminals (as well as for hunting and other forms of recreation).

The law has also changed. While states in the Founding era regulated guns—blacks were often prohibited from possessing firearms and militia weapons were frequently registered on government rolls—gun laws today are more extensive and controversial. Another important legal development was the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Second Amendment originally applied only to the federal government, leaving the states to regulate weapons as they saw fit. Although there is substantial evidence that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was meant to protect the right of individuals to keep and bear arms from infringement by the states, the Supreme Court rejected this interpretation in  United States v. Cruikshank  (1876).

Until recently, the judiciary treated the Second Amendment almost as a dead letter. In  District of Columbia v. Heller  (2008), however, the Supreme Court invalidated a federal law that forbade nearly all civilians from possessing handguns in the nation’s capital. A 5–4 majority ruled that the language and history of the Second Amendment showed that it protects a private right of individuals to have arms for their own defense, not a right of the states to maintain a militia.

The dissenters disagreed. They concluded that the Second Amendment protects a nominally individual right, though one that protects only “the right of the people of each of the several States to maintain a well-regulated militia.” They also argued that even if the Second Amendment did protect an individual right to have arms for self-defense, it should be interpreted to allow the government to ban handguns in high-crime urban areas.

Two years later, in  McDonald v. City of Chicago  (2010), the Court struck down a similar handgun ban at the state level, again by a 5–4 vote. Four Justices relied on judicial precedents under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Justice Thomas rejected those precedents in favor of reliance on the Privileges or Immunities Clause, but all five members of the majority concluded that the Fourteenth Amendment protects against state infringement of the same individual right that is protected from federal infringement by the Second Amendment.

Notwithstanding the lengthy opinions in  Heller  and  McDonald , they technically ruled only that government may not ban the possession of handguns by civilians in their homes.  Heller  tentatively suggested a list of “presumptively lawful” regulations, including bans on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, bans on carrying firearms in “sensitive places” such as schools and government buildings, laws restricting the commercial sale of arms, bans on the concealed carry of firearms, and bans on weapons “not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” Many issues remain open, and the lower courts have disagreed with one another about some of them, including important questions involving restrictions on carrying weapons in public.

For more on this subject from our scholars:

The Second Amendment By Nelson Lund and Adam Winkler

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Second Amendment

By: History.com Editors

Updated: July 27, 2023 | Original: December 4, 2017

The Second Amendment, often referred to as the right to bear arms, is one of 10 amendments that form the Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791 by the U.S. Congress. Differing interpretations of the amendment have fueled a long-running debate over gun control legislation and the rights of individual citizens to buy, own and carry firearms.

Right to Bear Arms

The text of the Second Amendment reads in full: “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.” The framers of the Bill of Rights adapted the wording of the amendment from nearly identical clauses in some of the original 13 state constitutions.

During the Revolutionary War era, “militia” referred to groups of men who banded together to protect their communities, towns, colonies and eventually states, once the United States declared its independence from Great Britain in 1776.

Many people in America at the time believed governments used soldiers to oppress the people, and thought the federal government should only be allowed to raise armies (with full-time, paid soldiers) when facing foreign adversaries. For all other purposes, they believed, it should turn to part-time militias, or ordinary civilians using their own weapons.

State Militias

But as militias had proved insufficient against the British, the Constitutional Convention gave the new federal government the power to establish a standing army, even in peacetime.

However, opponents of a strong central government (known as Anti-Federalists) argued that this federal army deprived states of their ability to defend themselves against oppression. They feared that Congress might abuse its constitutional power of “organizing, arming and disciplining the Militia” by failing to keep militiamen equipped with adequate arms.

So, shortly after the U.S. Constitution was officially ratified, James Madison proposed the Second Amendment as a way to empower these state militias. While the Second Amendment did not answer the broader Anti-Federalist concern that the federal government had too much power, it did establish the principle (held by both Federalists and their opponents) that the government did not have the authority to disarm citizens.

Well-Regulated Militia

Practically since its ratification, Americans have debated the meaning of the Second Amendment, with vehement arguments being made on both sides.

The crux of the debate is whether the amendment protects the right of private individuals to keep and bear arms, or whether it instead protects a collective right that should be exercised only through formal militia units.

Those who argue it is a collective right point to the “well-regulated Militia” clause in the Second Amendment. They argue that the right to bear arms should be given only to organized groups, like the National Guard, a reserve military force that replaced the state militias after the Civil War .

On the other side are those who argue that the Second Amendment gives all citizens, not just militias, the right to own guns in order to protect themselves. The National Rifle Association (NRA) , founded in 1871, and its supporters have been the most visible proponents of this argument, and have pursued a vigorous campaign against gun control measures at the local, state and federal levels.

Those who support stricter gun control legislation have argued that limits are necessary on gun ownership, including who can own them, where they can be carried and what type of guns should be available for purchase.

Congress passed one of the most high-profile federal gun control efforts, the so-called Brady Bill , in the 1990s, largely thanks to the efforts of former White House Press Secretary James S. Brady, who had been shot in the head during an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

District of Columbia v. Heller

Since the passage of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, which mandated background checks for gun purchases from licensed dealers, the debate on gun control has changed dramatically.

This is partially due to the actions of the Supreme Court , which departed from its past stance on the Second Amendment with its verdicts in two major cases, District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010).

For a long time, the federal judiciary held the opinion that the Second Amendment remained among the few provisions of the Bill of Rights that did not fall under the due process clause of the 14th Amendment , which would thereby apply its limitations to state governments. For example, in the 1886 case Presser v. Illinois , the Court held that the Second Amendment applied only to the federal government, and did not prohibit state governments from regulating an individual’s ownership or use of guns.

But in its 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller , which invalidated a federal law barring nearly all civilians from possessing guns in the District of Columbia, the Supreme Court extended Second Amendment protection to individuals in federal (non-state) enclaves.

Writing the majority decision in that case, Justice Antonin Scalia lent the Court’s weight to the idea that the Second Amendment protects the right of individual private gun ownership for self-defense purposes.

McDonald v. Chicago

Two years later, in McDonald v. Chicago , the Supreme Court struck down (also in a 5-4 decision) a similar citywide handgun ban, ruling that the Second Amendment applies to the states as well as to the federal government.

In the majority ruling in that case, Justice Samuel Alito wrote: “Self-defense is a basic right, recognized by many legal systems from ancient times to the present day, and in Heller , we held that individual self-defense is ‘the central component’ of the Second Amendment right.”

Gun Control Debate

The Supreme Court’s narrow rulings in the Heller and McDonald cases left open many key issues in the gun control debate.

In the Heller decision, the Court suggested a list of “presumptively lawful” regulations, including bans on possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill; bans on carrying arms in schools and government buildings; restrictions on gun sales; bans on the concealed carrying of weapons; and generally bans on weapons “not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.”

Mass Shootings

Since that verdict, as lower courts battle back and forth on cases involving such restrictions, the public debate over Second Amendment rights and gun control remains very much open, even as mass shootings became an increasingly frequent occurrence in American life.

To take just three examples, the Columbine Shooting , where two teens killed 13 people at Columbine High School, prompted a national gun control debate. The Sandy Hook shooting of 20 children and six staff members at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012 led President Barack Obama and many others to call for tighter background checks and a renewed ban on assault weapons.

And in 2017, the mass shooting at country music concert in Las Vegas in which 60 people died (to date the largest mass shooting in U.S. history, overtaking the 2016 attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida ) inspired calls to restrict sales of “bump stocks,” attachments that enable semiautomatic weapons to fire faster.

On the other side of the ongoing debate of gun control measures are the NRA and other gun rights supporters, powerful and vocal groups that views such restrictions as an unacceptable violation of their Second Amendment rights.

Bill of Rights, The Oxford Guide to the United States Government . Jack Rakove, ed. The Annotated U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. Amendment II, National Constitution Center . The Second Amendment and the Right to Bear Arms, LiveScience . Second Amendment, Legal Information Institute .

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Should More Gun Control Laws Be Enacted?

History of Gun Control Laws

Gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment (ratified in 1791). Some examples of gun control throughout colonial America included criminalizing the transfer of guns to  Catholics , enslaved people, indentured servants, and  Native Americans ; regulating the storage of gun powder in homes; banning loaded guns in Boston houses; and mandating participation in formal gathering of troops and door-to-door surveys about guns owned.

Guns were common in the American Colonies, first for hunting and general self-protection and later as weapons in the  American Revolutionary War . Several colonies’ gun laws required that heads of households (including women) own guns and that all able-bodied men enroll in the militia and carry personal firearms. Read more history…

Pro & Con Arguments

Pro 1 The Second Amendment is not an unlimited or individual right to own guns. In the June 26, 2008, District of Columbia et al. v. Heller U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited… nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” [ 3 ] On June 9, 2016 the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 7-4 that “[t]he right of the general public to carry a concealed firearm in public is not, and never has been, protected by the Second Amendment,” thus upholding a law requiring a permitting process and “good cause” for concealed carry licenses in California. [ 145 ] [ 146 ] A 2018 study found that 91% of the 1,153 court cases with claims stating a government action or law violate the Second Amendment between the 2008 D.C. v. Heller decision and Feb. 1, 2016 failed. [ 157 ] Further, the Second Amendment was intended to protect the right of militias to own guns, not the right of individuals to own guns. Former Justice John Paul Stevens, in his dissenting opinion for District of Columbia et al. v. Heller , wrote, “the Framer’s single-minded focus in crafting the constitutional guarantee ‘to keep and bear arms’ was on military use of firearms, which they viewed in the context of service in state militias,” hence the inclusion of the phrase “well regulated militia.” [ 3 ] Michael Waldman, President of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law, stated there is nothing about an individual right to bear arms in the notes about the Second Amendment when it was being drafted, discussed, or ratified; the US Supreme Court declined to rule in favor of the individual right four times between 1876 and 1939; and all law articles on the Second Amendment from 1888 to 1959 stated that an individual right was not guaranteed. [ 47 ] Read More

Pro 2 More gun control laws would reduce gun deaths. There were 572,537 total gun deaths between 1999 and 2016: 336,579 suicides (58.8% of total gun deaths); 213,175 homicides (37.2%); and 11,428 unintentional deaths (2.0%). Guns were the leading cause of death by homicide (67.7% of all homicides) and by suicide (51.8% of all suicides). Firearms were the second leading cause of deaths for children, responsible for 15% of child deaths compared to 20% in motor vehicle crashes. [ 30 ] [ 162 ] Female first-time firearm owners were 35 times more likely to commit suicide within 12 years of buying the gun compared to women who did not own guns; male first-time firearm owners were about eight times more likely to do so. [ 171 ] [ 172 ] Approximately 50% of unintentional fatal shootings were self-inflicted; and most unintentional firearm deaths were caused by friends or family members. [ 4 ] [ 18 ] Five women are murdered with guns every day in the United States. A woman’s risk of being murdered increases 500% if a gun is present during a domestic dispute. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, 5,364 US soldiers were killed in action between Oct. 7, 2001 and Jan. 28, 2015; between 2001 and 2012 6,410 women were killed with a gun by an intimate partner in the United States. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] [ 12 ] A study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that “legal purchase of a handgun appears to be associated with a long-lasting increased risk of violent death” [ 6 ] Researchers found that a “general barrier to firearm access created through state regulation can have a significant deterrent effect on male suicide rates in the United States. Permit requirements and bans on sales to minors were the most effective of the regulations analyzed.” [ 32 ] According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, implementing federal universal background checks could reduce firearm deaths by a projected 56.9%; background checks for ammunition purchases could reduce deaths by a projected 80.7%; and gun identification requirements could reduce deaths by a projected 82.5%. [ 148 ] Gun licensing laws were associated with a 14% decrease in firearm homicides, while increases in firearm homicides were seen in places with right-to-carry and stand-your ground-laws. [ 158 ] [ 160 ] More gun control leads to fewer suicides. When US gun ownership goes down, overall suicide rates drop; meanwhile, each 10 percentage-point increase in gun ownership is linked to a 26.9% increase in the youth suicide rate. In Indiana and Connecticut, after “red flag” laws to remove guns from people who may pose a threat were enacted, gun suicides decreased by 7.5% and 13.7% respectively, while suicides by other means did not decrease during the same time. A person who wants to kill him/herself is unlikely to commit suicide with poison or a knife when a gun is unavailable. [ 31 ] [ 33 ] [ 158 ] [ 159 ] [ 164 ] The US General Accountability Office (GAO) estimated that 31% of total accidental shooting deaths could have been prevented by installing safety devices on guns: 100% of deaths per year in which a child under 6 years old shoots and kills him/herself or another child could be prevented by automatic child-proof safety locks; and 23% of accidental shooting deaths by adolescents and adults per year could be prevented by loading indicators showing when a bullet was in the chamber ready to be fired. [ 35 ] Marjorie Sanfilippo, PhD, Professor of Psychology at Eckerd College who has researched children’s behavior around guns, stated, “We put gates around swimming pools to keep children from drowning. We put safety caps on medications to keep children from poisoning themselves…. [B]ecause children are naturally curious and impulsive, and because we have shown time and again that we cannot ‘gun-proof’ them with education, we have a responsibility to keep guns out of the hands of children.” [ 36 ] Read More

Pro 3 The presence of a gun makes a conflict more likely to become violent. The FBI found that arguments (such as romantic triangles, brawls fueled by alcohol or drugs, and arguments over money) resulted in 1,962 gun deaths (59.9% of the total). [ 37 ] An editorial published in the American Journal of Public Health noted, “gun-inflicted deaths [often] ensue from impromptu arguments and fights; in the US, two-thirds of the 7,900 deaths in 1981 involving arguments and brawls were caused by guns.” A study published in the same journal found that “the weapons used [in altercations]… were those closest at hand.” And thus, according to another study, “[r]ather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.” [ 38 ] [ 39 ] [ 40 ] Statistics show that guns are rarely used in self-defense. Of the 29,618,300 violent crimes committed between 2007 and 2011, 0.79% of victims (235,700) protected themselves with a threat of use or use of a firearm, the least-employed protective behavior. In 2010 there were 230 “justifiable homicides” in which a private citizen used a firearm to kill a felon, compared to 8,275 criminal gun homicides (or, 36 criminal homicides for every “justifiable homicide”). Of the 84,495,500 property crimes committed between 2007 and 2011, 0.12% of victims (103,000) protected themselves with a threat of use or use of a firearm. [ 16 ] [ 17 ] Further, armed civilians are unlikely to stop crimes and are more likely to make dangerous situations, including mass shootings, more deadly. None of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012 were stopped by an armed civilian. Jeffrey Voccola, Assistant Professor of Writing at Kutztown University, notes, “The average gun owner, no matter how responsible, is not trained in law enforcement or on how to handle life-threatening situations, so in most cases, if a threat occurs, increasing the number of guns only creates a more volatile and dangerous situation.” [ 41 ] [ 43 ] Common sense gun control laws can decrease the likelihood of a violent situation turning deadly. President Ronald Reagan and others did not think the AR-15 military rifle (also called M16s by the Air Force) should be owned by civilians and, when the AR-15 was included in the assault weapons ban of 1994 (which expired on Sep. 13, 2004), the NRA supported the legislation. A Mother Jones investigation found that high-capacity magazines were used in at least 50% of the 62 mass shootings between 1982 and 2012.When high-capacity magazines were used in mass shootings, the death rate rose 63% and the injury rate rose 156%. [ 7 ] [ 8 ] [ 48 ] The Second Amendment was written at a time when the most common arms were long rifles that had to be reloaded after every shot. Civilians today have access to folding, detaching, or telescoping stocks that make the guns more easily concealed and carried; silencers to muffle gunshot sounds; flash suppressors to fire in low-light conditions without being blinded by the flash and to conceal the shooter’s location; or grenade launcher attachments. Jonathan Lowy, Director of Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, states, “These are weapons that will shred your venison before you eat it, or go through the walls of your apartment when you’re trying to defend yourself… [they are] made for mass killing, but not useful for law-abiding citizens.” [ 49 ] [ 50 ] Read More

Pro 4 A majority of adults, including gun owners, support common sense gun control such as background checks, bans on assault weapons, and bans on high-capacity magazines. According to a Feb. 20, 2018 Quinnipiac Poll, 97% of American voters and 97% of gun owners support universal background checks. 67% support a nationwide ban on assault weapons, and 83% support mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases. [ 155 ] As much as 40% of all gun sales are undocumented private party gun sales that do not require a background check (aka the “gun show loophole”). [ 28 ] 53% of all adults surveyed approve of high-capacity magazine bans. 89% of adults with a gun in the home approve of laws to prevent the purchase of guns by the mentally ill, and 82% approve of banning gun sales to people on no-fly lists. [ 27 ] 77% of Americans support requiring a license to purchase a gun. [ 165 ] Don Macalady, member of Hunters against Gun Violence, stated, “As a hunter and someone who has owned guns since I was a young boy, I believe that commonsense gun legislation makes us all safer. Background checks prevent criminals and other dangerous people from getting guns.” [ 29 ] Many would like to see the U.S. enact more laws like other countries, citing the fact that countries with restrictive gun control laws have lower gun homicide and suicide rates than the United States. Both Switzerland and Finland require gun owners to acquire licenses and pass background checks that include mental and criminal records, among other restrictions and requirements. In 2007 Switzerland ranked number 3 in international gun ownership rates with 45.7 guns per 100 people (about 3,400,000 guns total). In 2009 Switzerland had 24 gun homicides (0.31 deaths per 100,000 people) and 253 gun suicides (3.29 deaths per 100,000 people). Finland ranked fourth in international gun ownership rates with 45.3 guns per 100 people (about 2,400,000 guns total). In 2007 Finland had 23 (0.43 deaths per 100,000 people) gun homicides and 172 gun suicides (4.19 deaths per 100,000 people). [ 44 ] [ 45 ] Read More

Con 1 The Second Amendment of the US Constitution protects individual gun ownership. The Second Amendment of the US Constitution reads, “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.” Gun ownership is an American tradition older than the country itself and is protected by the Second Amendment; more gun control laws would infringe upon the right to bear arms. Justice Antonin Scalia in the June 26, 2008, District of Columbia et al. v. Heller U.S. Supreme Court majority opinion syllabus stated, “The Second Amendment 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.” [ 3 ] The McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) ruling also stated that the Second Amendment is an individual right. [ 51 ] Lawrence Hunter, Chairman of Revolution PAC, stated, “The Founders understood that the right to own and bear laws is as fundamental and as essential to maintaining liberty as are the rights of free speech, a free press, freedom of religion and the other protections against government encroachments on liberty delineated in the Bill of Rights.” [ 52 ] The Second Amendment was intended to protect gun ownership of all able-bodied men so that they could participate in the militia to keep the peace and defend the country if needed. According to the United States Code, a “militia” is composed of all “able-bodied males at least 17 years of age… under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.” Therefore, the militia mentioned in the Second Amendment would have been composed of almost all adult men and, in turn, that most adult men should not have their right to own firearms infringed. [ 99 ] [ 100 ] Read More

Con 2 Gun control laws are discriminatory and infringe on citizens’ rights Current gun control laws are frequently aimed at inner city, poor, black communities who are perceived as more dangerous than white gun owners. Charles Gallagher, Chair of Sociology at LaSalle University, stated that some gun control laws are still founded on racial fears: “Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1.” [ 94 ] [ 95 ] [ 96 ] In the late 1960s, gun control laws were enacted in reaction to the militant, gun-carrying Black Panthers. Adam Winkler, UCLA Constitutional Law Professor, stated “The KKK began as a gun-control organization. Before the Civil War, blacks were never allowed to own guns” so, after the Civil War, there was “constant pressure among white racists to keep guns out of the hands of African Americans because they would rise up and revolt.” For example, in Virginia, in response to Nat Turner’s Rebellion (also called the Southampton Rebellion, in which enslaved people killed 55 to 65 people in the most fatal slave uprising in the United States) in 1831, a law was passed that prohibited free black people “to keep or carry any firelock of any kind, any military weapon, or any powder or lead and all laws allowing free black people to possess firearms were repealed. [ 97 ] [ 98 ] Background checks and micro-stamping are an invasion of privacy. Background checks require government databases that keep personal individual information on gun owners, including name, addresses, mental health history, criminal records, and more. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) worried that Senator Harry Reid’s 2013 proposed background check legislation (the bill failed 54-46) would have allowed the government to keep databases of gun purchases indefinitely, creating a “worry that you’re going to see searches of the databases and an expansion for purposes that were not intended when the information was collected.” Micro-stamping similarly requires a database of gun owners and the codes their personal guns would stamp on cartridge cases. Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Ted Cruz (R-TX) wrote that they would oppose any legislation that infringes “on the American people’s constitutional right to bear arms, or on their ability to exercise this right without being subjected to government surveillance.” [ 77 ] [ 78 ] [ 79 ] [ 80 ] Gun control laws infringe upon the right to self-defense and deny people a sense of safety. The police cannot protect everyone all of the time. 61% of men and 56% of women surveyed by Pew Research said that stricter gun laws would “make it more difficult for people to protect their homes and families.” Nelson Lund, Professor at George Mason University School of Law, stated, “The right to self-defense and to the means of defending oneself is a basic natural right that grows out of the right to life” and “many [gun control laws] interfere with the ability of law-abiding citizens to defend themselves against violent criminals.” A Pew Foundation report found that 79% of male gun owners and 80% of female gun owners said owning a gun made them feel safer and 64% of people living in a home in which someone else owns a gun felt safer. Even Senator Dianne Feinstein, a gun control advocate, carried a concealed gun when her life was threatened and her home attacked by the New World Liberation Front in the 1970s. [ 58 ] [ 59 ] [ 64 ] Gun control laws, especially those that try to ban “assault weapons,” infringe upon the right to own guns for hunting and sport. In 2011, there were 13.7 million hunters 16 years old or older in the United States, High-powered semiautomatic rifles and shotguns are used to hunt and in target shooting tournaments each year. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, “So-called ‘Assault weapons’ are more often than not less powerful than other hunting rifles. The term ‘assault weapon’ was conjured up by anti-gun legislators to scare voters into thinking these firearms are something out of a horror movie… [T]he Colt AR-15 and Springfield M1A, both labeled ‘assault weapons,’ are the rifles most used for marksmanship competitions in the United States. And their cartridges are standard hunting calibers, useful for game up to and including deer.” According to a Feb. 2013 Pew Research report, 32% of gun owners owned guns for hunting and 7% owned guns for target or sport shooting. [ 55 ] [ 65 ] [ 66 ] [ 67 ] [ 68 ] Read More

Con 3 Gun control laws simply do not work. Gun control efforts have proved ineffective. According to David Lampo, Publications Director of the Cato Institute, “there is no correlation between waiting periods and murder or robbery rates.” Banning high-capacity magazines will not necessarily deter crime because even small gun magazines can be changed in seconds.The “gun show loophole” is virtually nonexistent because commercial dealers, who sell the majority of guns at shows and elsewhere, are bound by strict federal laws. According to a Mar. 10, 2016 Lancet study, most state-level gun control laws do not reduce firearm death rates, and, of 25 state laws, nine were associated with higher gun death rates. [ 102 ] [ 148 ] Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world and yet, in 2012, Mexico had 11,309 gun murders (9.97 gun homicides per 100,000 people) compared to the United States that had 9,146 gun homicides (2.97 per 100,000 people). The country has only one legal gun store (the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales), compared to at least 63,709 legal gun stores and pawn shops in the United States as of Feb. 10, 2014. Mexico’s gun store is on a secure military base and customers must present a valid ID, go through a metal detector, and turn over cellphones and cameras to guards. To actually buy a gun, customers have to show proof of honest income, provide references, pass a criminal background check, prove any military duties were completed with honor, and be fingerprinted and photographed. If allowed to purchase a gun, the customer may buy only one gun (choosing from only .38 caliber pistols or lower) and one box of bullets. Between 2006 and 2010, Mexico’s one gun shop sold 6,490 guns, yet as of 2012, Mexicans own about 15,000,000 guns, or about 13.5 guns per 100 people. [ 44 ] [ 88 ] [ 89 ] [ 90 ] [ 91 ] [ 92 ] [ 93 ] The main reason gun control doesn’t work is because laws will not prevent criminals from obtaining guns or breaking laws. Of 62 mass shootings in the United States between 1982 and 2012, 49 of the shooters used legally obtained guns. Collectively, 143 guns were possessed by the killers with about 75% obtained legally. A Secret Service analysis found that of 24 mass shootings in 2019 at least 10 (42%) involved illegally possessed guns. [ 69 ] [ 176 ] The logical conclusion is that gun control laws do not deter crime; gun ownership deters crime. A study in Applied Economics Letters found that “assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level” and “states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murders.” While gun ownership doubled in the twentieth century, the murder rate decreased. Journalist John Stossel explained, “Criminals don’t obey the law… Without the fear of retaliation from victims who might be packing heat, criminals in possession of these [illegal] weapons now have a much easier job… As the saying goes, ‘If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.’” [ 53 ] [ 56 ] [ 103 ] More gun control is not needed; education about guns and gun safety is needed to prevent accidental gun deaths. 95% of all US gun owners believe that children should learn about gun safety. The Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc (SAAMI), stated, “Whether in the field, at the range or in the home, a responsible and knowledgeable gun owner is rarely involved in a firearms accident of any kind.” According to Kyle Wintersteen, Managing Editor of Guns and Ammo , studies show that “children taught about firearms and their legitimate uses by family members have much lower rates of delinquency than children in households without guns” and “children introduced to guns associate them with freedom, security, and recreation—not violence.” [82] [85] [154] [ 82 ] [ 85 ] [ 154 ] Read More

Con 4 Gun control laws give too much power to the government and may result in government tyranny and the government taking away all guns from citizens. 57% of people surveyed by Pew Research in Feb. 2013 said that gun control laws would “give too much power to the government over the people.” [ 58 ] The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre stated, “if you look at why our Founding Fathers put it [the Second Amendment] there, they had lived under the tyranny of King George and they wanted to make sure that these free people in this new country would never be subjugated again and have to live under tyranny.” [ 75 ] Concurring, Alex Jones, radio host, stated, “The Second Amendment isn’t there for duck hunting, it’s there to protect us from tyrannical government and street thugs… 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms!” [ 76 ] The Libertarian Party stated, “A responsible, well-armed and trained citizenry is the best protection against domestic crime and the threat of foreign invasion.” Counsel for the NRA explains, “It is evident that the framers of the Constitution did not intend to limit the right to keep and bear arms to a formal military body or organized militia, but intended to provide for an ‘unorganized’ armed citizenry prepared to assist in the common defense against a foreign invader or a domestic tyrant.” [ 86 ] [ 87 ] Marco Rubio (R-FL), US Senator, speaking about gun control laws during his 2016 presidential campaign, stated, “If God forbid, ISIS visits our life, our neighborhood, our school, any part of us, the last thing standing, the last line of defense could very well be our ability to protect ourselves.” [ 149 ] Read More

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Home / Essay Samples / Social Issues / 2Nd Amendment / 2nd Amendment: Pros & Cons

2nd Amendment: Pros & Cons

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Work Cited Page

• History.com Editors. (2017, December 04). Second Amendment. Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.history.com/topics/united-states-constitution/2nd-amendment
• Why Own a Gun? Protection Is Now Top Reason. (2020, May 30). Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2013/03/12/why-own-a-gun-protection-is-now-top-reason/
• The Pros and Cons of Gun Ownership: Cove Security. (n.d.). Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.covesmart.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-gun-ownership-for-home-security
• What if all guns disappeared? (n.d.). Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180417-what-would-happen-if-all-guns-disappeared
• Miller, B. (2019, February 14). 19 Biggest 2nd Amendment Pros and Cons. Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://greengarageblog.org/19-biggest-2nd-amendment-pros-and-cons
• Why a repeal of the 2nd Amendment would not be enough to stop gun violence. (2019, August 16). Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2019/08/16/why-repeal-2nd-amendment-would-not-be-enough-stop-gun-violence
• Repealing the Second Amendment – is it even possible? (n.d.). Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.cbsnews.com/news/repealing-the-second-amendment-is-it-even-possible/
• Vargas, E. (2019, November 20). Gun Violence in America : A State-by-State Analysis. Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/guns-crime/news/2019/11/20/477218/gun-violence-america-state-state-analysis/
• States With Weak Gun Laws Suffer From More Gun Violence. (2019, September 24). Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/dem/releases/states-with-weak-gun-laws-suffer-from-more-gun-violence
• Gun Violence Must Stop. Here's What We Can Do to Prevent More Deaths. (n.d.). Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.preventioninstitute.org/focus-areas/preventing-violence-and-reducing-injury/preventing-violence-advocacy
• Neera Tanden, W. (n.d.). Preventing Gun Violence in Our Nation. Retrieved December 07, 2020, from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/courts/reports/2013/01/12/49510/preventing-gun-violence-in-our-nation/  

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