FREE ESSAY ON SECOND AMENDMENT LOOP HOLE

SECOND AMENDMENT LOOP HOLE

Second amendment loop hole
.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
they meant the state? 
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
pg79) 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
most confusion. 
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,pg57) 
. 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 , pg85)