What does the Second Amendment mean to you?
The Second Amendment to the U.S Constitution is surprisingly short. Its exact wording is: “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.”
Are reasonable regulations consistent with the Second Amendment?
The principle that reasonable regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment has been affirmed throughout American history.
Is the First Amendment a good analogy to the Second Amendment?
The Founding-era laws indicate why the First Amendment is not a good analogy to the Second. While there have always been laws restricting perjury and fraud by the spoken word, such speech was not thought to be part of the freedom of speech.
What did the Anti-Federalists disagree with the Second Amendment?
They disagreed only about whether an armed populace could adequately deter federal oppression. The Second Amendment conceded nothing to the Anti-Federalists’ desire to sharply curtail the military power of the federal government, which would have required substantial changes in the original Constitution.
What would have happened if the Second Amendment never existed?
But had the Second Amendment never existed, as Burger said he wished, the role the NRA plays in American culture and politics would likely be much more muted, and opinions about rights to gun ownership in the U.S. would likely still favor heavier restrictions.
Is the death penalty unconstitutional?
Specifically, the Fifth Amendment commands that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital . . . crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury . . . nor be deprived of life . . . without due process of law.” If the death penalty were unconstitutional, they argue, it would not be mentioned in the Constitution.
Is an AR-15 protected by the Second Amendment?
It makes no more sense to say an AR-15 isn’t protected by the Second Amendment than it does to say that computers or ballpoint pens aren’t protected by the First. But evolving technology does call for evolving regulation. And, in practice, the implementation of the Second Amendment has never been strictly “absolute.”