Amendments

The Adoption of the 13th Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1965 In the turn of the fifteenth century African American traveled with European explorers, especially Spanish and Portuguese to the New world many serving as crew members, servants and slaves (Bigelow, 2011).

African Americans were free in the beginning times of the New World, though first white landowners faced labor crisis, what appeared easiest was to force the strong, hardworking African Americans to slavery by the mid-sixteen hundreds, second the United States Constitution in 1788 did not help, it guaranteed equality only to whites and consider blacks as three-fifths of a person (Bigelow, 2011). The end of the Civil War and the help of Abraham Lincoln, in December 1865 the Thirteen Amendment to the constitution was adopted, stating that slavery was abolished, though it was the beginning of blacks worst struggles to come (Bigelow, 2011).

The following will view African-Americans lives from the adoption of the Thirteen Amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1965 focusing how they have worked to end segregation, discrimination and isolation to gain equality and the civil rights. Technology help the New World take its shape, but many would not know that African Americans had a huge impact developing the beginning of it. In 1790 an invention that impacted this countries production of cotton was the cotton gin; invented by Eli Whitney an African American, it helped separate the cotton from the cotton seed which allowed the textile industry to grow (Trotter, 2000).

This did not help the blacks they were not viewed as having technical knowledge but only as labor workers, which pushed slavery and Nat Turner’s rebellion in 1832 which outlawed blacks to read, write and cipher (Trotter, 2000). 1836 the U. S. Patent Act came to affect which required inventors to submit models showing the construction, design and specifications, which the literacy restriction denied African Americans to patent their inventions (Trotter, 2000).

Then in 1857 the US Supreme Courts Dred and Scott decision, the federal government ruled that enslaved blacks were not citizens which they could not receive patents for their inventions (Trotter, 2000). All this things became obstacles for African Americans to be recognized for their inventions and knowledge in technology. African Americans continue pushing forward and with blacks being excluded from the industrial industry, the impact of emancipations, civil rights law and constitutional amendment, African Americans went from slaves to citizens which gave them rights, which led to many more inventions.

The shoe lasting machine was a notable invention by Jan Matzeliger’s, this machine would attached the upper part of the shoe to the sole, which at the times was only done by hand; before 50 pair of shows were done in a day and by the time he perfected the machine 700 pairs of shoes were done in a 10 hour day (Jan Matzeliger, 2011). Other inventions came from Elijah McCoy, who invented numerous lubrication devices for locomotives engines for the railroads and boat steam engines and Grandville T.

Wood’s electrical inventions, including a telephone transmitter (Trotter, 2000). It seems African Americans were moving forward though soon after African Americans face another struggle Jim Crows Law or Black Codes. This brought the beginning of segregation; Jim Crows law took voting rights because when the fifteenth Amendment gave those rights to Africans Americans it left loop holes which it was required to take literacy tests and the practice of poll taxes, which again discriminated the blacks (Bowles, 2011).

Poll taxes required blacks to show either a payment or a proof of land ownership and the literacy test required blacks to know how to read which most recent freed slave did not know how to read because of the Nat Turner that took education privileges away before the Civil War (Bowles, 2011). Jim Crows laws also separated and downgraded African Americans from the whites, but not for long because the West brought many more opportunities to African Americans.

The government excluded Asian immigrants but allow African Americans to take advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862, allowing to purchase 160 acres of land for $1. 25 per acre and to take land for free if a homesteader farmed it for a period of five years (Bowles, 2011). Another Act was the Timber act of 1873 this stated if settlers planted trees of at least one-quarter of the land for four years it gave them the option of taking another 160 acres of land for free, which helped solve some problems of isolation because the West was unknown and required collaboration of people and government (Bowles, 2011).

World War I also brought opportunities to African Americans because it called out for 2. 8 million US Citizens out to war which left many Northern jobs vacated which started the time of the “great migration” (Bowles, 2011). African Americans got the opportunity to move North in Massachusetts munitions plants, Pennsylvania steel mills, and New Jersey brick yards, it was said half a million migrated around World War II (Bowles, 2011).

In the 1920’s to 1930’s blacks worked very hard to become better and have equal rights but many industrial places still believed in the Jim Crows law, which the blacks moved from job to jobs, formed all black labor unions like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, domestic and servant unions, which broke the strike of discriminatory white labor unions in aluminum, coal mining, meatpacking and the steel industries (Trotter, 2000). By 1926 10,000 blacks worked for Henry Ford and gave them many opportunities like supervisory positions, those who worked for Ford felt superior to other plants (Trotter, 2000).

This was a rising time for African Americans and as proven, standing their ground and pushing forward was what it required to gain equals rights and the start of a time for those to fight for what belonged to them. In the beginning of the 1930’s many intellectuals like Richard Wright believed that the Communist Party of the United States of America CPUSA was the best solution to fight racial inequalities in employment, housing and education (Carreiro, 1999). The CPUSA was known as “Negrotarians” the members seemed to adopt intellectual maturation and independence thought from African Americans (Carreiro, 1999).

Zora Neal Hurtson an anthropologist and author was the first to use the term “Negrotarians” they were white humanitarians and philanthropist who “aesthetically and financially supported young black artist” (Carreiro, 1999). In Voice of the Negro sourced and excerpted stories from African Americans newspapers and published them in 1920 was Robert Kerlin (Bowles, 2011). This gave whites an opportunity to understand firsthand of how African Americans lives were in the United States, which gave blacks an opportunity to speak to become equal (Bowles, 2011).

African Americas racial pride and intense desire for equality, the Harlem Renaissance began, they were Harlem artist who demanded respect (Bowles, 2011). From 1920-1934 the whites social reformers and black intellectual faced many problems and whites continue to dominate political and social institutions with no gains of civil rights (Carreiro, 1999). The South continued the Jim Crows law and voting restriction and in the North blacks dealt with color-line employment, housing and entertainment (Carreiro, 1999).

Harlem Renaissance declined and was face to a shift of economic and social reform, which was greatly shown in 1933 during the Great Depression (Carreiro, 1999). African continue pushing forward in a wild roller coaster of improvement and then having to start again, but the hard work had been noticed, but hard times called for focus in a time like the Great Depression. African Americans continue the battle of equal rights and believed to fight for the country they lived in. So when World War II came about, nearly one million served, but continued being segregated in to black units led by white officers (Bowles, 2011).

Many did not back down and continue to fight for the equal rights they deserved, so on April 12, 1945 101 U. S. Army African American Officers were taking in to custody because they refuse an order from a superior officer, they refused segregation of housing and recreational areas (Bowles, 2011). African American pilots also protested segregation and many showed it by risking their lives, like the Tuskegee airmen Fighter Group 332nd, who flew 15,000 sorties and shot down more than 200 German aircraft, though none were recognized for their heroism, until 50 years later by Bill Clinton (Bowles, 2011).

The years from 1950’s to 1960’s many African leaders arise, like members of the NAACP, women, ministers, black powered organizations, and youths from colleges, all protesting for segregation, discrimination and isolation to end for civil rights. A notable civil rights movement was in 1954 with the ruling of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, it help desegregate African Americans and whites at school’s (Bowles, 2011).

Oliver brown argued that it was injustice to make his daughter to walk several miles to attend an all-black school, when a school of all-white was only three block away from her home, which the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision Plessy stated that schools needed to be equal. In this case it was just making it harder for his daughter and other children to attend school, so Chief Justice Earl Warren ruled in favor of Oliver Brown (Bowles, 2011). Though the ruling was done it unfortunately left the rest, for the board of education to figure out when they would desegregate, which they were in no hurry to do anything about it.

Arkansas governor Orval Faubus opposed the ruling and assembled the Arkansas National Guard to confront it, but President Eisenhower did not allowed and sent 1,000 paratroopers from the 101st Airborne Division to allow the Little Rock Nine to attend the all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas (Bowles, 2011). President Eisenhower was a huge influencer to civil rights, he approved the Civil Rights Act of 1957, it did not do much positive to African Americans but it helped established a civil rights office within the Department of Justice, with 10 lawyers staffing it (Bowles, 2011).

Other influencers of the time, that kept things true through music was Bob Dylan, singing about the 14 year old boy Emmet Till who was beaten to death by two white men, and both later released (Bowles, 2011). Times were tough and in spark of the civil rights movement this set them back in times of hatred and violence, segregation continue in the South and the Brown decision disappeared in Arkansas, a new strategy needed to be approached. Rosa Parks a 42 year old African American women and former secretary of the NAACP, road a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955 helped focus on a new strategy to civil rights (Bowles, 2011).

Riding the bus was not the problem, the problem was that the city ordinance stated that African Americans had to give up their seat on a train or bus if a white person asked; it also stated blacks were not allowed to sit parallel with a white person. Rosa Parks refused to give her seat when a white man asked for it; he got off the next stop, called authorities and had her arrested (Bowles, 2011). As a former NAACP she was committed to the movement but she acted as a private citizen, which led to the Montgomery bus boycott.

A 26 year-old black pastor responding with poetic and deeply felt words led to another approach of civil rights movement, his name was Dr. Marti Luther King, Jr. He helped organized the Montgomery bus boycott, about 90 percent of blacks that normally rode the bus on a daily basis began walking, riding a bicycle or carpooling to work (Bowles, 2011). He also helped urge for them to buy less at Christmas since the lack of transportation, plus it was a good time to show what Christmas was truly about.

The boycott lasted until the Browder vs. Gayle federal case, which showed that segregation laws were unconstitutional, which helped King become a noticeable civil rights leader, with stories appearing in New York Times Magazine, he appearing in the cover of Time, and was the second African America guest in NBC;s Meet the Press (Bowles, 2011). Following Gandhi nonviolent philosophy he was able to coordinate many more boycotts in other cities, which led other to view this movement differently in a more nonviolent way.

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee formed sit-ins as a form to protest. Four African American freshmen from the North Carolina Agricultural and technical College sat under a sign that read, “We don’t serve colored here” but they did not cared and remained seated until closing and promised to return the next day till served (Bowles, 2011). This movement spread quickly with roughly 70,000 people sitting in across the nation, some 2,000 arrested and some were attacked by whites (Hall, 2007).

The NAACP a national leader supplied bail money and legal advice to this activist, and later 3000 from the NAACP boycott stores that practice discrimination which dropped sales because of the refusal to buy (Hall, 2007). Though this movement was nonviolent others like the white used force one being done in 1963 Bull Connor unleash police dogs and high-pressure hoses on Black school-children in Birmingham, Alabama bringing blacks to the streets (Hall, 2007). King went to Washington, DC, where he gathered 200,000 demonstrators at the National Mall and addressed them with his famous “We Shall Overcome” speech on August 23, 1963. King’s words at the capital that day were a defining moment of the Civil Rights movement (Bowles, 2011). ” After the assassination of President Kennedy, Johnson assures congress he would honor the passage of the civil rights bill that Kennedy fought for before his death.

The Civil Right Act of 1964 stated, “An Act, to enforce the constitutional right to vote, to confer jurisdiction upon the district courts of the United States to provide injunctive relief against discrimination in public accommodations, to authorize the Attorney General to institute suits to protect constitutional rights in public facilities and public education, to extend the Commission on Civil Rights, to prevent discrimination in federally assisted programs, to establish a Commission on Equal Employment Opportunity, and for other purposes (Bowles, 2011). This helped start the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who serve as a watch dog to employers to treat every employee equally. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was the final pass after a march that ended as the Bloody Sunday; blacks were attacked as they walked 52 miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama (Bowles, 2011). These boycotts, sit-ins and marches led to a change in laws and lead to the end of legal segregation of the races, known as the de jure segregation (Bowles, 2011).

African Americans are sure very hard working citizens to what they believe are right and will go the limit to prove this right. With continues roller coasters over high and rocky mountains, blacks accomplished many success that lead to the Acts passed in 1965. Many important people including some white supported the end of segregation and civil rights which with patience and courage it was shown it was something accomplishable over time, since change requires time.? References

Bigelow, B. C. (2011). African Americans. Retrieved October 2, 2011, from Countries and Their Cultures website: http://www. everyculture. com/multi/A-Br/African-Americans. html Bowles, M. (2011). A history of the United States since 1865. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education Carreiro, A. E. (1999, Summer). Ghosts of the Harlem Renaissance: “Negrotarians” in Richard Wright’s Native Son. The Journal of Negro History, 84(3), 247-259. Retrieved from http://www. jstor. rg/ stable/2649004 Hall, S. (2007, November). Civil Rights Activism in 1960s Virginia. Journal of Black Studies, 38(2), 251-267. Retrieved from http://www. jstor. org/stable/40034978 Jan Matzeliger. (2011). Retrieved October 2, 2011, from http://www. blackinventor. com/pages/ jan-matzeliger. html Trotter, J. W. , Jr. (2000, Fall). African Americans and the Industrial Revolution. OAH Magazine of History, 15(1), 19-23. Retrieved from http://www. jstor. org/stable/25163396

When I think about the dreams of the founders I think about the amendments. These amendments represented their core beliefs. When I think about that I look at society and think how well have the amendments been followed. In a sense most of the amendments have been followed well, but in the last 20 or 30 years that has been declining rapidly. The 1st amendment, probably the easiest to follow is being silently fought. Now it may not be illegal to say something but by the time you say it you might have wished it was.

People are beat to a bloody pulp because their opinion of the president, or even worse their favorite sports team. What has this nation come to when we beat a living person to a bloody pulp for the sports team that they like! I think we need to take a step back and look at ourselves for a second. The 2nd amendment is our first freedom. For the last 100 years people have slowly been trying to tax and regulate our right and freedom to bear arms. The 2nd amendment states that their should be a militia ready for times of war. It does not say an army, a militia.

If I remember correctly the definition of militia is a military force raised by civilians to take place of an army in an emergency. Now how are we supposed to act like a military force, if the law abiding citizens of this country cannot buy a basic infantryman’s rifle. Yes you can buy a modified version, but we should be able to buy any type of firearm we would like, because it is our right and our freedom. This amendment isn’t about no duck hunting. It’s about the people’s right, freedom, and ability to protect themselves and their country. The 3rd amendment Is our freedom of religion.

In this day and age christianity is frowned upon, at the time of our founders christianity represented the core belief system of almost every man, woman, and child. Nowadays you have atheists making it illegal to display any signs of religion, you want to put a nativity scene in front of your house, so sorry you probably need a permit for that, or its against your city ordnance. You want to have a christmas party at the local town/city green, no problem, only you need to call it a winter party, winter holiday party, or non denominational festive celebration, pretty insane.

To make matters worse we have a president, a president the leader of a country whose motto is “IN GOD WE TRUST” is supporting the beliefs of Islam, a country who believes that America is satan. You know its bad when we have a muslim president. The constitution has been changed and twisted so much that I bet the founders are doing backflips in their graves. In a society were the sacred organization of marriage is being laughed at and challenged day to day, this isn’t just a political challenge its a virtue, and morality challenge as well.

This country was founded on good, christian values and after the influence of God and the Holy Ghost. Christopher Columbus talks about a calm and spiritual feeling coming over him as he studied his maps and sailed on the open waters. There is no question that God had a hand in the founding of this country. At the time of Columbus, Asia had all the necessary means and resources to sail to the new world, and almost did. But Columbus did first and opened the path for God’s country, the light set on a hill.

When this countries core belief system is attacked we must defend it, and if it fails we are in deep trouble. The day we take God out of everything is the day we are utterly and absolutely screwed. The founders knew that God must be at the center of our lives and that we must show Godlike attributes for this country to succeed, the amendments did a pretty good job of following the ten commandments if you think about it, for example the 2nd amendment may have something to do with those commandments that talk about coveting, and stealing?

Although there are things wrong with America, and although it is painful to say there are a lot of things wrong but at then end of the day this is still the place, the Country chosen above all other countries to be an ensign unto all nations. To be the place where that great Lord Jesus the Christ will return again, where every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Although we may be going through some rough times in America we must see the light at the end of the tunnel. When Thomas Jefferson said that there must be a separation of church and state I don’t think he realized what trouble he would cause years down the road.

People now think that that statement means that we must take God out of all Politics and Government, the people who believe this are sadly and utterly WRONG. The statement that Thomas Jefferson made in a letter to a friend, not even in the Constitution, stated that we must not allow the Government control the Church, and not allow the Church to control the Government. We now see what happens when people take things out of context. This country is a beautiful one and still offers more than any other country in the world, but that is slowly decaying, and we are rapidly becoming more and more like, other countries in the world.

We must return to the founders first dream, illustrated in the amendments and expressed in their letters and personal documents. We must not remove God from our lives, when we do we decay morally and spiritually and we as a society will slowly but surely spiral out of control. God still loves us and this country. He loves us no matter what, and though we may be going through a rough time in America’s history, it will all be for our profit and learning, there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and boy it is a bright and glorious one.

This is his country, he inspired Columbus in his studying to find this country. He inspired the founders, to go against the tight grip of England, and write a constitution and declare independence. He inspired the writers and signers of the declaration of independence, to defy a nation and become an even stronger nation, full of love, and freedom. Now in this our darkest time we abandon our God, yet we need to remember that he has not abandoned us. The founders knew that a day would come when the constitution would be challenged, now its up to us as a nation to defend their dream.

We must not give up as a nation, or even as individuals, at the end of the day there is no collective salvation, we must teach our families and our children the correct way of living, a Godlike way of living. We must try first to show faith, hope and charity to ourselves, and then our family, before we can try it as a nation. That is what we need, faith, hope, and charity. That was what the founders wanted to tell us. We must show faith hope and charity. No free government hand-outs.

This report provides background information about the Second Amendment. Also it offers a viewpoint on the magnitude and nature of the problem “right to keep and bear arms” and discusses the two competing interpretations that predominates the Second Amendment. Furthermore this report identifies political, cultural, administrative, and law enforcement realities that pose enormous obstructions to formulating, passing, implementing, as well as enforcing more gun controls. Introduction

Regardless of being the subject of huge popular and political controversy, until relatively recently the Second Amendment was one of the most neglected areas of constitutional scholarship. The regulation of arms is not just a technical problem. It is an extremely charged ideological and emotional issue that carries an incredible amount of symbolic baggage. For American society, the debate over gun control is more like the debates over abortion and school prayer than like a debate over automobile safety.

Millions of Americans, together with a noteworthy percentage of the intellectual elite, think that guns are bad in themselves and that owning them is at best misguided and at worst pathological. For millions of American gun owners, the right to keep and bear arms is associated to freedom and democracy; it is an article of faith similar to the belief that other Americans have in the centrality of freedom of speech and religion.

That several Americans dismiss the right to bear arms as a myth that has no legal or constitutional reality is a challenge to the believers’ worldview and offend to their very status in American society. It is just a short step to considering the proponents of gun prohibition as “enemies” to be resisted and condemned. Two competing interpretations of the Second Amendment predominate, the “collective” or “states’ rights” interpretation and the “individual rights” interpretation.

In the collective rights model, American citizens have no individual right to bear arms; such a right, it is argued, belongs merely to those in the state militias since the purpose of the Amendment was to reassure the states that through the maintenance of “well regulated” militias they would be capable to protect themselves from any danger posed by the new national government’s standing army.

On the contrary, advocates of the individual rights interpretation contend that the Second Amendment protects the rights of all individuals to keep and bear arms (subject to certain conditions), not just those in the state militias; that it is the “right of the people. ” This, it is argued, is in reference to how the First, Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments are interpreted.

While the terms “republican” and “liberal” have clear-cut meanings to historians, the use of these terms can be quite confusing to the uninitiated, since the “republican” school of Second Amendment interpretation would doubtless find themselves at variance with many Republican politicians today, and the “liberal” school of Second Amendment analysis, with a few notable exceptions, would probably prefix the word “classical” before calling themselves liberals of any sort. (Clayton E. Cramer, 1994).

The republican school asserts that the right to keep and bear arms was an outgrowth of republicanism, intended to protect the society from the related evils of a standing . While the arms might be broadly distributed, they would still be possessed by the population for the purpose of collective action against a foreign army, or a domestic tyrant. (Clayton E. Cramer, 1994). The liberal school asserts that the right was individual, a logical outgrowth of the right to self-defense. Such arms would be for the defense of the individual against private criminals; there was no need for a collective purpose or ownership.

(Clayton E. Cramer, 1994). When it comes to the question of identify the intellectual and historical antecedents of the Second Amendment, there is, again, broad agreement between the collective and individual rights theorists. Whether tracing its roots through the Florentine political tradition and Machiavelli or the radical English Whig tradition of James Harrington, John Trenchard, and Thomas Gordon, both sides accept that the Second Amendment has to be understood, at least in part, in terms of republicanism.

Particularly, there is no argument that an armed citizenry was, as militia members contend, an essential component of eighteenth-century republican thought. The cause for this, in Gordon Wood’s memorable phrase, is that republics were seen to be states of “fragile beauty” Which is to say, that due to man’s continual craving for power it was believed that republics were in constant danger from both external enemies and internal corruption, and citizens’ militias were regarded as very important in resisting these dangers.

(Gordon S. Wood, 1969) Certainly, the militia movement’s engagement with republicanism assists to elucidate why it reacts to any attempt at gun control with horror. After all, it was a commonplace of eighteenth-century republicanism that merely tyrannical governments would attempt to disarm their people. Voicing such concerns-and linking them to the sacrifices made by America’s Revolutionary generation-the U. S. Militia takes the view that even though “foreign governments may disarm their subjects, we will not go down that road.

” “We will not disarm,” they declare. As militia members see it, the right to bear arms allows Americans “to back up our other Bill of Rights. ” Lose this right, they compete, and, sooner or later, they will lose all their rights. Republican support of citizens’ militias went beyond the often expressed concern that standing armies might turn out to be the pawns of corrupt governments, and issues of who eventually controlled the means of force in society, however. The ownership of arms was essential to the very idea of republican citizenship.

Arms, it was argued, provided the means by which a citizen could both maintain his independence and-as with jury service-actively participate in his own governance. In classical and early modern republican thought, arms were the “ultimo ratio whereby the citizen pictures his life to the protection of the state and simultaneously makes sure that the choice to expose it cannot be taken without him. It was the possession of arms which made a man a full citizen, able to, and required to display, the multiple adaptability and self-development which is the crown of citizenship. Access to arms would not create a republican citizen in itself, though.

The key to citizenship certainly the key to the successful functioning of republican society as a whole-was to be found in the concept of virtue. Wood describes virtue as the “willingness of the individual to sacrifice his private interests for the good of the community” (Gordon S. Wood, 1969) that is, to serve the common good-and the ultimate sacrifice an individual could make, certainly, was to lay down his life in defense of the republic. This is mainly worth noting since it adds a republican dimension to the obvious readiness of militia members to sacrifice themselves in emulation of their Revolutionary forefathers.

Considerably, militias were seen as institutions in which citizens could be trained in virtue-where virtue would not merely be inculcated and nurtured, however as well exercised in the act of resisting the republic’s enemies. Modern militia members are well aware of these aspects of republicanism: that militias were intended to offer a means for citizens to vigorously participate in the republican polity and had a vital role in instilling virtue in those citizens. Pro– and anti–gun control proponents sharply disagree regarding whether the Second Amendment poses an impediment to gun controls.

Gun control proponents argue that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with individual rights; it guarantees merely that states can maintain organized militia units. They point to an unbroken line of court decisions that reject Second Amendment challenges to federal, state, and local gun controls. Gun owners’ rights supporters cite a large and impressive composition of mostly historical scholarship that reveals that the founding fathers and, subsequently, the authors and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment, intended the Second Amendment to protect the individual American’s right to be armed.

There is much to be said on both sides of the constitutional debate. The great majority of state constitutions have clauses protecting the right of gun ownership. The merely states whose constitutions do not hold a right to bear arms are Iowa, California, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Minnesota. However, Iowa’s, California’s, and New Jersey’s constitutions openly protect the right to “self-defense. ” Some state constitutions use the same language as the Second Amendment, however several openly protect the individual’s right to keep and bear arms.

Consider Vermont’s constitution, enacted in 1777: “That the people have a right to bear arms for the defense of themselves and the State—and as standing armies in time of peace are dangerous to liberty, they ought not to be kept up; and that the military should be kept under strict subordination to and governed by the civil power. ” http://www. law. ucla. edu/faculty/volokh/beararms/statecon/htm Pennsylvania’s constitutional right to bear arms is measured to be the precursor to the Second Amendment.

Enacted in 1790, at the time that the Bill of Rights was being ratified, it states: “The right of the citizens to bear arms in defence of themselves and the State shall not be questioned. ” http://www. law. ucla. edu/faculty/volokh/beararms/statecon/htm This language has always been interpreted by Pennsylvania courts to protect the right of all Pennsylvanians, not just militiamen, to possess firearms. Oklahoma’s constitution, enacted in 1907, overtly protects the right to keep a gun at home, at the same time as subjecting the carrying of concealed weapons to regulation:

“The right of a citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person, or property, or in aid of the civil power, when thereunto legally summoned, shall never be prohibited; but nothing herein contained shall prevent the Legislature from regulating the carrying of weapons. ” http://www. law. ucla. edu/faculty/volokh/beararms/statecon/htm In recent years, numerous states have added gun ownership rights to their constitutions. For instance, Wisconsin amended its constitution so that

“The people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose. ” http://www. law. ucla. edu/faculty/volokh/beararms/statecon/htm These state constitutional provisions would not protect gun owners from federal gun controls; however they protect gun owners against some state and local gun controls. The Second Amendment to the U. S. Constitution states: “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 abridged.

” http://www. law. ucla. edu/faculty/volokh/beararms/statecon/htm In U. S. v. Cruikshank, a nineteenth-century case, the U. S. Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment was merely a protection against federal infringements of a right to bear arms. Although this decision predated the Supreme Court’s 20th century decisions incorporating various Bill of Rights guarantees into the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause, with the outcome of guaranteeing those rights against violation by state and local governments, plus by the federal government.

It is not at all apparent that mid-nineteenth-century judges were unaware to any right to keep and bear arms. Consider this passage from the Supreme Court’s infamous decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1856), in which the Supreme Court held that slaves and their descendants could claim no rights of citizenship. What is interesting from our viewpoint is the Court’s understanding of what are the rights of citizenship. The Supreme Court pointed out that the framers could not have intended that slaves or their descendants ever be citizens because that

“would give to persons of the Negro race, who were recognized as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went. And all this would be done in the face of the subject race of the same color, both free and slaves, and inevitably producing discontent and insubordination among them, and endangering the peace and safety of the State”. (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U. S.

393 (1856)) Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar argues that the right of individuals to be armed was very much the intention of the drafters and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment. After the Civil War, the southern states quickly passed “black codes” that clearly denied the newly freed slaves the right to keep and bear arms. The debates in Congress in the 1860s over the Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment were laced with comments regarding the need to assure that the freed slaves not be kept disarmed and thus submissive, and that they be capable to enjoy the same right to keep and bear arms as white citizens. (Akhil Amar, 1998).

The Supreme Court has rendered merely one Second Amendment decision in the twentieth century. In U. S. v. Miller (1939), the Court held that, in making it a crime to own an unregistered sawed-off shotgun, the NFA did not violate the Second Amendment. Gun rights advocates say that the precedential value of the case is just that people are not guaranteed access to gangster weapons, like sawed-off shotguns, and that by negative inference they do have a right to arm themselves with traditional personal firearms. Gun controllers argue that the Second Amendment does not guarantee anybody anything and that Miller means that there is no personal right to possess firearms in the U. S. Constitution.

Focusing on the amendment’s first clause, they argue that the amendment means only that Congress could not abolish the state militia, now the National Guard. Gun rights advocates believe that the Second Amendment guarantees every law-abiding American adult a right to keep and bear personal firearms. “Implicit in the Bill of Rights, as in the entire structure of the Constitution, are the twin hallmarks of traditional liberal thought: trust in the people; and distrust in government. ” (David Hardy, 1979). Some proponents of this interpretation stress that the right to keep and bear arms was intended to guarantee protection against government tyranny.

Liberal constitutional law theorist, William Van Alstyne, finds an individual rights view of the Second Amendment in a textual reading of the amendment. He argues that the amendment “Speaks to sources of security within a free state, within which… ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. ’” He explains that this language guarantees the individual’s right to have arms for self-defense and self-preservation. (William Van Alstyne, 1994). Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Tribe, a person closely associated with liberal politics and the Democratic Party, as well concludes that “It is impossible to deny that some right to bear arms is among the rights of American citizens. ” (Lawrence H. Tribe, 2000).

Conceivably the Supreme Court will take a chance to interpret the Second Amendment in a recent Texas case. The U. S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas stated unconstitutional the federal law (18 U. S. C. sec. 922 [g][8]) which makes it a crime to own a firearm while under a restraining order for domestic violence as applied in a situation where the state divorce court, which issued the restraining order, had made no exclusive findings that the defendant posed a threat to his estranged wife. The district court held that the Second Amendment guarantees a personal right to keep and bear arms (U. S. v. Emerson, 46 F. Supp. 2d 598 [1999]). Two years later, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals (Nov. 2001) affirmed, holding that

“we find that the history of the Second Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of the text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are members of a select militia or performing active military service or training. ” Even though the U. S. Supreme Court eventually affirmed that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms, which may never happen, the contrary belief is strongly rooted in U. S. and English history, in the constitutions of most U. S. states, as well as in a mountain of pro-gun scholarship. Many gun owners think that possession of firearms is a right of American citizenship and would not be persuaded otherwise, even by a U. S. Supreme Court decision to the contrary, just as death penalty opponents suppose that the Supreme Court was wrongheaded in declaring executions to be constitutionally permissible.

Jeffrey Snyder made the point aggressively in his 1993 Public Interest article, “A Nation of Cowards”: “The repeal of the Second Amendment would no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the government to imprison and kill people at will. A government that abrogates any of the Bills Of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever votes illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern”. References: Akhil Amar (1998). The Bill of Rights: Creation and Reconstruction (New Haven: Yale University Press). Clayton E. Cramer (1994).

For the Defense of Themselves and the State: The Original Intent and Judicial Interpretation of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms; Praeger Publishers, 1994 David Hardy (1979). “The Second Amendment as a Restraint on State and Federal Firearms Restrictions,” in Restricting Handguns, ed. Don Kates (Great Barrington, Mass. : North River) Gordon S. Wood (1969). The Creation of the American Republic; Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press http://www. law. ucla. edu/faculty/volokh/beararms/statecon/htm Jeffrey Snyder (1993). Nation of Cowards; Public Interest article Lawrence H. Tribe (2000). American Constitutional Law, 3rd ed. (New York: Foundation) William Van Alstyne (1994). “The Second Amendment and the Personal Right to Arms,” Duke Law Journal 43