Example research essay topic: Founding Fathers Bear Arms - 680 words

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. When I was born my grandfathers gift to me was a lifetime NRA membership and on my twelfth birthday I received my fathers. 22 caliber rifle, which he had gotten from my grandfather as a young boy. The topic of discussion at most family gatherings normally involves whatever species of animal is in season or gun control. Growing up in this environment has given me an interesting outlook on certain issues, mostly those having to do with gun control and the Second Amendment. It is my belief that the original intent and purpose of the Second Amendment was to preserve and guarantee, not grant the pre-existing right of individuals, to keep and bear arms. The Second Amendment 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.

Although there is an emphasizes on the need for a militia, membership in any militia let alone a well regulated one, is not required. to prove this you only need to look at The first nine amendments of the United States Constitution which were clearly meant to preserve individual rights. The use of the word people in the Second Amendment indicates an individual right. While the Tenth Amendment which reads: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. With this wording the writers of the constitution have clearly, distinguished between the rights states and the people.

Are we to assume the Founding Fathers were so careless in constructing a legal document like the Constitution that they would use the word "people" when The Second Amendment was meant to accomplish two distinct goals, each perceived as crucial to the maintenance of liberty: First, it was meant to guarantee the individual's right to have arms for self-defense and self-preservation. Such an individual right was a legacy of the English Bill of Rights. The American framers of the Second Amendment, like their English predecessors, rejected language linking their right to "the common defense." (Joyce Lee Malcom pg 79) When, as William Blackstone phrased it in 1803, the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression. (Pg. 105) The second and related objective concerned the militia, and it is the grouping of these two objectives that has caused the The argument that the right to have weapons was exclusively for members of a militia can not be proven given the information left to use by the Founding Fathers. The House committee eliminated the stipulation that the militia be "well-armed, " and the Senate, in what became the final version of the amendment, eliminated any description of a militia. While these changes left open the possibility of a poorly armed and narrowly based militia. It did not change the amendments guarantee that the right of the people to have arms not be infringed.

As was the case in the English tradition, the arms in the hands of the people, not the militia, are relied upon "to restrain the violence of oppression" (Malcom, pg 57). As with any civil right, the essence of persuasion should remain with the proponent of legislation that restricts or burdens the right to keep and bear arms, rather than, as with ordinary legislation, on the opponent. As Daniel D. Polsby states, the public policy of discouraging people from owning or using firearms is not, by itself, constitutionally permissible, any more than discouraging people from religious observance would be permissible to some future, oh-so-progressive government that considered religion as hopelessly taboo. As some consider the right to keep and bear arms. And any statute or regulation that burdens the right to keep and bear arms on the ground that guns are a public health hazard should enjoy the same frosty reception in court that would be given to a statute or regulation that burdened the free exercise of religion as a mental health hazard. (Daniel D.

Polsby, pg 85) Bibliography:

Research essay sample on Founding Fathers Bear Arms