2nd-amendment

Amendment II

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The Second Amendment or popularly known as The Right to Bear Arms was originally created to allow citizens to protect themselves against the attacks of the militaries of other nations. When the amendment was created the United States had just fought Britain and was worried that Britain would retaliate against them at any moment.   The amendment was created because it would take too long to get the national military together to fight back against surprise attacks. However, since its original creation, the interpretation of this amendment has changed significantly. In the modern day, many perceive this amendment to say that citizens are allowed to own guns.  

One side to the argument is that the Second Amendment should stay as long as it is used to the original purpose of the amendment.   Because the amendment was vague, many people misunderstood the amendment and each person understood it in a different way. Questions have risen over parts of the amendment that were not mentioned in the constitution such as the right to bear arms in public and which type of guns were allowed to be owned by a common citizen.  

The other side to the argument is that similar to the First Amendment there is a point where reason overrules the amendment. For example, despite the notion that there is freedom of speech, one cannot commit perjury or fraud. Also despite the right to bear arms one cannot possess a nuclear bomb.   Many agree with the amendment in which it means that a law abiding citizen can own a gun and protect themselves against opposing governments or criminals. The controversy begins with which type of guns can be owned and by who. Many people who disagree with the Second Amendment believe that guns can be allowed to be owned by citizens but it should be more difficult to purchase a gun.  

Originally there was a law in Washington DC that stated that all guns must be registered and that all guns stored at home must be unloaded and locked. Police Officer Dick Anthony Heller was denied the right to own a handgun but was denied. He then sued the District of Columbia.   The supreme court reversed this law as it was a violation of the Second Amendment. This shows that even hundreds of years after the creation of the constitution, the constitution is still looked at to decide laws around guns.  

While I believe that this amendment should remain, I think that there needs to be stricter guidelines and restrictions around who can own guns where they can carry them. For example I think that it should be more difficult to purchase a gun and if you are not a part of the military or a police officer, it should be illegal to possess a gun outside of your property. While in many areas it is already illegal to carry a loaded gun, the punishment for doing so should be harsher.

Ongoing Debate with Impeachment, Article II Section IV – Holden MacDougall

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Amendment II Section IV, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

The American Revolution resolved in a separation from Britain and gave rise to the need for a new governmental structure without a monarch. In an attempt to create a decentralized government with separate and interdependent powers, the framers viewed it as necessary to give congress the power of impeachment. It is a part of the system of checks and balances.

This clause is responding to fears of unchecked and tyrannical power in the government, as well as ideas brought about by the absolutist monarchy french revolution. It also echoes theories of John Locke, Rousseau, and Montesquieu. The commonly understood meaning of the impeachment clause is that a government official of the United States (typically a federal judge, President, or Vice President.) can be impeached and removed from office if convicted of committing a serious crime and/or abuse of office. Various interpretations of the impeachment clause arise when one considers the type of crime being committed, and whether that crime relates to the public office or private life of the accused person.

An interpretation that would make impeachment a over powerful political weapon is if impeachment concerned both the public and private life of a government official, and if any forms of misconduct or misbehavior were accepted as ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’. A narrower interpretation considers only treason, bribery, and crimes committed relating to a government official’s public office to be an impeachable offense. Some scholars believe that a broad interpretation of the impeachment power would allow a single political party or opponent to potentially abuse this power to eliminate select people  by convicting them of vague forms of misconduct.

This would make impeachment also a very powerful tool for Congress ( more specifically the senate, which has the power to try all impeachments). The case, Nixon v. United States (1993), involved the debate over impeachment and the power it gives to the Senate. The ruling affirms that impeachment power is solely assigned to the Senate and House of Representatives. This case relates to the debate over the interpretation of  “high crimes and misdemeanors” and how much power this phrase could give to those in the Senate. Since Nixon v. United States deemed Senate impeachment trials ‘non-justiciable’, meaning that they are not able to be resolved through law alone, it indicates that impeachment trials concern acts that do not fall under the law, rather are acts of misconduct, which highlights the importance of defining what acts are ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’.

This provision connects to the writings of Montesquieu, who argued for separation of powers in government, because the impeachment power is part of a system of checks and balances that is core to the U.S. constitution, and to Rousseau, who expressed that government should serve the general will of the people, because impeachment concerns those whom the people elect the government. I find the interpretation that ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ mentioned article II, section IV only concern matters of public office that harm the well-being of the citizens more persuasive than impeachment on the grounds of a matter of private life because, like with any job, a person is typically fired based acts committed and relating to the workplace that affects their job and the company, rather than because of acts associated with one’s private life.

I would advocate amending the phrase “other high crimes and misdemeanors”. This area is the primary source of divergent interpretations of this clause because of its vagueness, so amending it would help to clarify the types of crimes worthy of impeachment.

Second Amendment-Right to Bear Arms-Abriana Menin

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Second Amendment – Right to Bear Arms

The second amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America reads as follows: “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.” I will be focusing particularly on the section regarding the right to bear arms, or in other words, the right of individuals to own and carry protective weapons. The bill of rights, which was created in order to ensure the individual rights of people were established in addition to the laws of the constitution, was ratified and added to the constitution on December 15, 1791; barely a decade after the end of the American Revolution. This is significant because the United States had only recently finished fighting in the war, so it is understandable why an amendment would be added to give each individual the right to own firearms and protect themselves in the event that citizens would need to rally together in the future, whether to fight against external forces or even their own government. It is also important to acknowledge that the United States had fought in the war with an under-resourced military composed of ordinary people who had already owned firearms, therefore the people agreed it would be best to maintain that right. Furthermore, the people of the United States believed that the government should not have the right to deprive an individual of their right to bear arms just as seriously as they believed one should not be denied freedom of speech and exercise of religion. 

Although the ideals behind the amendment were unified, the interpretations of the right to bear arms were very divergent once the amendment was ratified. Many of the debates surrounding the right to bear arms all directly relate back to the reality that the United States has evolved significantly since the ratification of the Bill of Rights. Specifically, the United States no longer has militias, and the federal government supplies resources to the federal army, therefore there is no need for civilians to have arms at the ready in case war strikes again. More recently, the Second Amendment has been interpreted as a right to own weapons as a means for self defense; however, there were still some loopholes in the language of the amendment. These loopholes were scrutinized and regulated in the Supreme Court case “District of Columbia v. Heller” (2008). In this case, Heller argued that prohibiting concealed carry, the use of arms by felons and people who are mentally ill, along with prohibiting being armed in places like schools and government buildings, in light of modern-day society, is still lawful despite the phrasing of the second amendment, but still strives to maintain the right for each individual to bear arms for the soul purpose of self-defense. This has caused much controversy since the court ruling agreed with Heller, specifically regarding cases involving concealed-carry and what is considered self-defense. 

Moreover, the right to bear arms is a direct consequence of the founding enlightenment idea of the right to own property, and the establishment of the government as an institution that cannot take away that right, thus enforcing negative liberty. Therefore it was believed that taking away one’s right to bear arms would transitively be infringing what it means to be an American citizen. However, I do not agree that every citizen should be able to own and use arms under any circumstance. If I were to amend this amendment, I would change it to read “the right of the authorized government officials to keep and bear Arms, shall be permitted until said official proves themself untrustworthy.” This way, only people who are appointed by the government to use arms for specific purposes will be able to have access to weapons. However, if they demonstrate any reason to be fearful of the way in which they use those arms, the government has the ability to strip that official of their entitlement.

The Second Amendment

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The second amendment to the Constitution grants citizens of the United States of America the right to bear arms. The reason behind the passing of the second amendment was to prevent the need for the United States to maintain a standing army. Many U.S citizens feared that if there were a standing army, the government would use soldiers to oppress citizens. This fear was generated because of the British troops occupying several parts of America at the time. The Quartering Act obliges U.S citizens to allow wandering troops to remain on their properties, causing unnecessary complications in the lives of many U.S colonists. These troops were viewed as a burden and citizens feared that members of a standing U.S army would abuse their liberties just as so. In order to prevent soldiers from causing harm to U.S citizens, the Framers decided that the government should only be allowed to raise full-time, paid army troops when needed to fight foreign opposition. For other needs such as protection from invasions, the government would rely on a citizen led militia. This militia would be made up of men supplying their own weapons in order to protect the nation. 

The original purpose of the second amendment was to allow citizens to bear their own weapons when serving in the military forces in the United States. However, the most common interpretation is that the amendment grants all citizens the right to keep and bear arms. This amendment can be easily misunderstood because of lack of clarity. Legal scholars often argue that, because of the lack of clarity, the amendment is able to be interpreted in multiple ways. If I were to explain the second amendment to someone in conversation, I would explain that it grants all U.S citizens the right to bear arms. While I do not believe that this was the original purpose of the amendment, I do believe that this is how it reads. If I were to offer a slight change in the second amendment, I would suggest more specific wording in order to directly relay the purpose. However, because of recent events and increase in gun violence, I do not believe that average citizens should be offered the right to bear arms at all, and I would limit the amendment to those serving in governmental organizations such as the military or the police force.   

 

2nd Amendment

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The second amendment was written because of a mix of fear of a British invasion and basic mistrust of professional soldiers. With this fear the government decided to add an amendment to the constitution to allow for states to have a militia that allowed them to protect against foreign and domestic enemies without the government being able to stop them.

This was of course before the US had a real military though we do still have something similar to the state militias in the national guard. When it comes to interpreting things into something completely different than the original meaning nothing out does the second amendment the original text 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.” Of course the common interpretation is very different and seems to commonly be everyone in America has the right to own and operate guns without restriction. Because of this so many different opinions and meanings have been debated but to simplify them all i’m going to make three sections: red, purple and blue, the red and blue of course pointing to the extremes not everyone’s views.

The red opinion is that everybody should have guns and that gun regulation will not work whatsoever and is an ineffective solution that we should not try to implement. The purple is more of a middle ground opinion basically saying that we should still allow people to own guns but impose strict regulation to purchase and usage like mental illness, age and criminal record.

And finally the blue this opinion is basically that we should ban all guns as allowing for people to own them is inherently dangerous. Of course the debates made by legal scholars are mainly centered around if the Second Amendment had 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 can be seen in the case District of Columbia v. Heller (2008).

This can of course be connected to the American revolution as the point of the amendment was to allow states to protect themselves. I find the purple opinion the most persuasive as it is a good middle ground that has the highest probability of being agreed upon because though it is not a perfect solution it is one that everyone can agree on. And when it comes to changing the amendment well, I would re-word the entire amendment to be much more specific in the case of gun regulations: specify how they are different for active members of the military and specify the restrictions age and other that are required for owning each separate type of gun.