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The Second Amendment

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Enter three American homes, and chances are, one of them will have a gun. In a study done by Harvard University in 2004, thirty-eight percent of American households reported owning at least one gun. For generations, it has been a proudly proclaimed by Americans that they have the right to bear arms. This right, however, is under attack from the forty-six percent of Americans who now believe that the United States needs to pass stricter gun laws or change the second amendment. This number is decreased three points from just four months ago (Diamond). The second amendment should not be repealed or amended due to the Supreme Court’s YEAR ruling on the second amendment, the lack of success of gun control in other countries, and the necessity of …show more content…
The second amendment itself is vague, constituted of only twenty seven words. “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 (Cohen).” While lawmakers struggle to interpret what the Framers meant when they wrote these words, what they meant at the time does not matter to us now. Much of the United States Constitution is open-ended, leaving modern politicians, judges, and citizens to decide how those words apply to the United States today. The Supreme Court’s ruling just seven years ago states that there is a constitutional right to own a gun, and this ruling serves America in these modern times. Additionally, much of the gun control discussion now revolves around background checks (Bash). However, the fourth amendment to the Constitution protects citizens’ right to privacy. If gun control laws, such as background checks, were passed, the privacy of United States citizens owning guns would be infringed, violating the fourth amendment (ProCon.org). The second amendment protects the peoples’ right to bear arms, and the fourth amendment protects their privacy, making any gun control laws, especially containing background checks, …show more content…
One example of this was prohibition in the United States from 1919 to 1933. During these years, alcohol was still available if the American people went underground. Similarly, if guns were more difficult to get or outlawed, the sales and purchases of guns would likely not stop, but rather they would go underground (Taylor). Mexico should also serve as a precedent for the United States as lawmakers examine gun control. Mexico is home off some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, but it also has some of the highest gun-related crime rates. Each person wishing to purchase a gun must pass a firm background check and is limited to only one gun that is .38 caliber or lower. Yet the ratio of gun homicides to population in Mexico is 3.4 times greater than that ratio in the United States (ProCon.org). Sweden is another country with stringent gun laws. This did not, however, stop violence from occurring in schools. On October 22, 2015, a masked man entered a school in Trollhattan, Sweden and fatally injured a teacher and student using a sword (Melvin). The lack of guns did not stop this man, and it would not stop

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