Joshua Gendron
Argumentative Essay
Against Gun Control
Guns owned by the average law abiding citizen aren't used in crimes, but they might be one day. Not just any crimes, of course. No, they won't be used to rob liquor stores, settle disputes between rival drug-trafficking gangs, or commit other crimes that happen in the real world. If gun control activists get their way, the crime will be simply owning them. Gun control will accomplish one or the other of two outcomes. Gun control will either make criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens, or it will allow only the criminals to own guns, greatly compromising the safety of the average citizen. Thankfully our forefathers set forth a group of laws upon the advent of the United States entitled “The Constitution of the United States”. Several amendments were added. One of these laws is the Second Amendment which 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.”
It is difficult for the average citizen to interpret the amendment; however, in October 2001, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in the United States verses Emerson case that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms. Fifth Circuit Senior Judge, William L. Garwood, wrote the documented decision. It is devoted to issues of the Second Amendment and finds it entirely in favor of the individual rights interpretation. To quote a portion of this document, the court said: "We have found no historical evidence that the Second Amendment was intended to convey militia power to the states . . . or applies only to members of a select militia . . .. All of the evidence indicates that the Second Amendment, like other parts of the Bill of Rights, applies to and protects individual Americans. We find that the history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of its text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are a member of a select militia or performing active military service or training. We reject the collective rights and sophisticated collective rights models for interpreting the Second Amendment. We hold, consistent with United States verses Miller, that it protects the right of individuals, including those not then actually a member of any militia or engaged in active military service or training, to privately possess and bear their own firearms . . ..” In this quote two court cases ruled that the Second Amendment refers to individual United States Citizens rights, the right to keep and bear arms. The three-judge panel all completely agreed that the right to arms may be subject to only "limited, specific exceptions or restrictions that are reasonable and not inconsistent with the right of Americans generally to individually keep and bear their private arms as historically understood in this country.” As examples of these reasonable exceptions, the court noted that "felons, infants, and those of unsound mind may be prohibited from possessing firearms”.
