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Gun Control versus The Right to Bear Arms Essay

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With the topic of gun control comes a widely split crowd. There are those that believe that gun control is necessary for decreasing crime and making a nation a safer place to live. And on the other end of the spectrum, they are those that speak of how anti-gun control is what would make our nation a safer place to live. After all, ?Would a person be as likely to break into another family's home knowing that the family has means of personal protection?? (Warren 308). ?Most everyone will agree that felons, addicts, morons, juveniles, alcoholics, the mentally incompetent, and others in whose hands even an ice pick or a baseball bat becomes a deadly weapon, should be denied a gun.? (Selib 202) However, what about those individuals that are …show more content…

This is simply not true. ?During the period in which the second amendment was written, ?regulated? was defined as ?properly disciplined??(Gardiner) The creators of this amendment believed that those choosing to exercise their right to bear arms needed to be trained, and become experienced and competent in their usage. What is the Bill of Rights? The Rights of the individual, what we, the people, are allowed to do under these broad Amendment ?laws.? Let us take a look back at how the Bill of Rights comes into play with the second amendment. In 1689 the English Bill of Rights was passed, by Parliament in response to King James II trying to disarm his subjects. The English Bill of Rights allowed people to be armed ?suitable to their conditions? and ?allowed by law.? This right was then transferred to the American colonies, and after the American Revolution, our Bill of Rights of 1791, further strengthened the second amendment claim of the people?s right to bear arms, with the words ?the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.? The Bill of Rights limits the power of the federal government. How does it do this? How about an example? Can the federal government establish a federal religion that all must follow and have faith in? Most definitely not, the first amendment prohibits this from happening. The first amendment says, in part,

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