The Right To Bear Arms

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The Right To Bear Arms
2nd Amendment
BY
Ryan Roberts Josh Clark Tray Laurendeau
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1791 - States ratify the Second Amendment,
stating that "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."
May 2, 1792 - The Militia Act of 1792 clarifies
the role of the militia and requires all
able-bodied men ages 18 to 45 to be equipped to
serve and participate in annual musters. 1871 -
The NRA (National Rifle Association) is founded
by two Union Veterans. 1934 - the attempted
assassination of President Roosevelt, the
National Firearms Act is put in place to regulate
and tax machine guns. 1938 - The Federal
Firearms Act reaches beyond earlier legislation
to require licensing of handgun dealers and ban
the sale of firearms to criminals. 1949 - The
NRA establishes America's first hunter education
program. 1965 - Scientist Stephanie Kwolek
develops the polymer Kevlar, which revolutionizes
the concept of body armor. Over 2,500 police
officers' lives have been saved by Kevlar
bulletproof vests.
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1986 - The Law Enforcement Protection Act bans
the possession of "cop killer" bullets that can
shoot through bulletproof armor. 1998 - The
FBI-run national instant background check for all
gun purchases goes into effect. 1999- Teen-agers
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 12 students
and one teacher at Columbine High School, fueling
a new campaign on gun control. 1999 - President
Clinton announces a 15 million federal gun
buyback plan 2000 - Members of the gun industry
fire back at the federal government, with a
lawsuit opposing a plan to give purchasing
preference to manufacturers who agree to design
safer guns. 2000 - Thousands of mothers and
children gather in Washington, D.C. and cities
across the country for the Million Mom March, a
demonstration for "common sense" gun control
laws 2001 - The Bush administration ends funding
for the HUD gun buyback program 2008 - The U.S.
Supreme Court rules that Americans have a right
to own guns for self-defense and hunting, the
justices' first definitive pronouncement on gun
rights in U.S. history.
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White house press secretary James S. Brady became
a symbol of courage for millions of Americans
after he was shot in the head during John
Hinckleys unsuccessful attempt to assassinate
president Ronald Reagan in March 1981. He was
reported dead by the three major television
networks, but Brady fiercely clung to life and
battled back from massive injuries. His left arm,
and leg was paralyzed. He returned in the 1980s
to take on political wars again. James and his
wife Sarah Brady created the Brady Bill which
later passed in the mid-1991.
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Cruikshanks lawyers had sought to show that the
indictments were flawed because neither the
indictment nor section 6 of the statue mentioned
race as an element of the crimes charged. William
Cruickshank's and his fellow defendants pro
section and conviction for the murders on Easter
Sunday 1873. The supreme courts ruling on those
conviction three years later would be seen as
signaling a retreat from those same
enforcements polices. Ultimately officials
arrested nine men and brought them back to New
Orleans for trial. Cruickshank was one of them.
Cruikshank, Hadnut and Irwin were all charged on
first 16 counts and excluded from the last 16.
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Dylan
Eric
Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennet Klebold were
the high school seniors who committed
the Columbine High School massacre. They killed
13 people and injured 21 others. Three people
were also injured as they escaped the
attack. Both Harris, 18 years old, and Klebold,
17, committed suicide at the site of the
killings. Eric was born in Wichita, Kansas. The
Harris family relocated often as Eric's father,
Wayne Harris, was a U.S. Air Force transport
pilot. Dylan was born in Lakewood, Colorado.
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Charlton Heston was the President of the National
Rifle Association during 1998 to 2003. He is most
famous for his acting career some of the movies
he was in are planet of the apes and ben-dur
which he won an academy award for best actor. In
the 1950s and 1960s he was one of a handful of
Hollywood actors to speak openly against racism
and was an active supporter of the Civil Rights
Movement. In 1944 Heston enrolled in the United
States air force. He reached the rank of staff
Sergeant. At the 2000 NRA convention, he raised a
rifle over his head and declared that a
potential Al Gore administration would take away
his Second Amendment rights "from my cold, dead
hands." In announcing his resignation in 2003, he
again raised a rifle over his head, repeating the
five famous words of his 2000 speech. Millions
knew Heston as one of America's most impassioned,
authoritative advocates of Second Amendment
freedom. On April 5, 2008, Charlton Heston passed
away at age 84.
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William Conant Church and George Wood
Wingate established the National Rifle
Association in 1871 .George Wood Wingate was
an American lawyer and organizer
of rifle practice. During the Civil War he served
in a New York regiment. In 1867 Wingate drew up
rules for systematic rifle practice by Company A,
22nd regiment, New York National Guard, of which
he was then captain. The publication of these
rules led to the organization of the National
Rifle Association of America, of which he was
first secretary and later president for 25 years.
William Conant Church was an American journalist
and soldier. In 1860 he became publisher of the
New York Sun . He then later resigned his
journalistic position on his appointment as
captain in the United States Volunteers in 1862,
and served for one year, receiving brevets
of major and lieutenant colonel.
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NRA Philosophy
The National Rifle Association of America,
or NRA, is an American non-partisan, non-profit
organization which lists as its goals the
protection of the Second Amendment of the United
States Bill of Rights and the promotion of
firearm ownership rights as well as
marksmanship, firearm safety, and the protection
of hunting and self-defense in the United States.
The NRA sponsors firearm safety training courses,
as well as marksmanship events. The NRA is
sometimes said to be the single most powerful
organization in the United States. Its political
activity is based on the principle that gun
ownership is a civil liberty protected by
the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights, and
it claims to be the oldest continuously
operating civil rights organization in the United
States.
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National Firearms Act
The National Firearms Act ("NFA") is an Act of
Congress passed in 1934 that, in general, imposes
a statutory excise tax on the manufacture and
transfer of certain firearms and mandates the
registration of those NFA. The purpose of the
1934 National Firearms Act was to regulate what
were considered "gangster weapons" such as
machine guns and hand grenades. Then U.S.
Attorney General Homer S. Cummings recognized
that firearms could not be banned outright under
the Second Amendment, so he proposed restrictive
regulation in the form of a high tax and federal
registration. Originally, pistols and revolvers
were to be regulated as strictly as machine guns.
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The Brady Bill
The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act was
an Act of the United States Congress that, for
the first time, instituted federal background
checks on firearm purchasers in the United
States. It was signed into law by President Bill
Clinton on November 30, 1993, and went into
effect on February 28, 1994. The Brady Act
requires that background checks be conducted on
individuals before a firearm may be purchased
from a federally licensed dealer, manufacturer or
importer - unless an exception applies. If there
are no additional state restrictions, a firearm
may be transferred to an individual upon approval
by the National Instant Criminal Background Check
System (NICS) maintained by the FBI.
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The Militia Act
The Militia Act of 1862 was enacted by
the United States Congress in 1862 during
the American Civil War to draft 300,000 eligible
soldiers into the Union Armies. It also
allowed African Americans to join the Union Army.
While praised by many abolitionists and
black-rights activists as a first step toward
equality, it stipulated that the newly recruited
black soldiers primarily be used for manual
labor, not combat. Although black soldiers proved
themselves as reputable soldiers, discrimination
in pay and other areas remained widespread.
According to the Militia Act of 1862, soldiers of
African descent were to receive 10 a month, plus
a clothing allowance of 3.50. Many regiments
struggled for equal pay, some refusing any money
until June 15, 1864, when Congress vacated that
portion of the Militia Act and granted equal pay
for all black soldiers.
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The Gun Control Act
The Gun Control Act of 1968, is a federal law in
the United States that broadly regulates
the firearms industry and firearms owners. It
primarily focuses on regulating interstate
commerce in firearms by generally prohibiting
interstate firearms transfers except among
licensed manufacturers, dealers and importers.
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The Brady Campaign
The Brady Campaign is to Prevent Gun Violence is
a non-profit organizations in the United States.
The mission statement of the Brady Campaign is
"to enact and enforce sensible gun laws,
regulations, and public policies through
grassroots activism, electing public officials
who support gun laws, and increasing public
awareness of gun violence." James Brady and Sarah
Brady have been influential in the movement since
at least the mid-80s. Sarah Brady replaced Pete
Shields as chair in 1989. The Brady Campaign
emerged from Handgun Control, Inc., originally
the National Council to Control Handguns. The
Brady Campaign was the chief supporter of the
Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, known as
the "Brady Bill" .
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United States V. Cruikshank
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542 (1876).
This was the first case in which the Supreme
Court had the opportunity to interpret the Second
Amendment. The Court recognized that the right of
the people to keep and bear arms was a right
which existed prior to the Constitution when it
stated that such a right. The Court held,
however, that because the right to keep and bear
arms existed independent of the Constitution, and
the Second Amendment guaranteed only that the
right shall not be infringed by Congress, the
federal government had no power to punish a
violation of the right by a private individual
rather, citizens had "to look for their
protection against any violation by their
fellow-citizens" of their right to keep and bear
arms to the police power of the state.
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Presser V. Illinois
Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 (1886).
Although the Supreme Court affirmed the holding
in Cruikshank that the Second Amendment, standing
alone, applied only to action by the federal
government, it nonetheless found the states
without power to infringe upon the right to keep
and bear arms.Presser, moreover, plainly
suggested that the Second Amendment applies to
the states through the Fourteenth Amendment and
thus that a state cannot forbid individuals to
keep and bear arms. The statute under which
Presser was convicted did not forbid individuals
to keep and bear arms but rather forbade "bodies
of men to associate together as military
organizations, or to drill or parade with arms in
cities and towns unless authorized by law . . .
." As the Court had already held that the
substantive right to keep and bear arms was not
infringed by the Illinois statute since that
statue did not prohibit the keeping and bearing
of arms but rather prohibited military-like
exercises by armed men, the Court concluded that
it did not need address the question of whether
the state law violated the Second Amendment
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Miller V. Texas
Miller v. Texas, 153 U.S. 535 (1894) Miller
challenged a Texas statute on the bearing of
pistols as violative of the Second, Fourth, and
Fourteenth Amendments. The Court then turned to
the claim that the Texas statute violated the
rights to bear arms and against warrantless
searches as incorporated in the Fourteenth
Amendment.  the Court refused to consider
Miller's contentions. the Supreme Court refused
to decide the defendant's claim because its
powers of adjudication were limited to the review
of errors timely assigned in the trial court .
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US V. Miller
U.S. v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 (1939). This is the
only case in which the Supreme Court has had the
opportunity to apply the Second Amendment to a
federal firearms statute. In the absence of any
evidence tending to show that possession or use
of a "shotgun having a barrel of less than
eighteen inches in length" at this time has some
reasonable relationship to the preservation or
efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot
say that the Second Amendment guarantees the
right to keep and bear such an instrument.Thus,
for the keeping and bearing of a firearm to be
constitutionally protected, the firearm should be
a militia-type arm. The case also made clear that
the militia consisted of "all males physically
capable of acting in concert for the common
defense" and that "when called for service these
men were expected to appear bearing arms supplied
by themselves and of the kind in common use at
the time."
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Lewis V. United States
Lewis v. United States, 445 U.S. 95 (1980).
Lewis recognized -- in summarizing the holding
of Miller, supra, as "the Second Amendment
guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm
that does not have 'some reasonable relationship
to the preservation or efficiency of a
well-regulated militia'"  Lewis was concerned
only with whether the provision of the Omnibus
Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 which
prohibits the possession of firearms by convicted
felons violated the Second Amendment. Thus, since
convicted felons historically were and are
subject to the loss of numerous fundamental
rights of citizenship -- including the right to
vote, hold office, and serve on juries.  the
Court concluded that laws prohibiting the
possession of firearms by a convicted felon "are
neither based upon constitutionally suspect
criteria, nor do they trench upon any
constitutionally protected liberties."
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District of Columbia V. Heller
For the first time in seventy years, the Court
heard a case regarding the central meaning of the
Second Amendment and its relation to gun control
laws. After the District of Columbia passed
legislation barring the registration of handguns,
requiring licenses for all pistols, and mandating
that all legal firearms must be kept unloaded and
disassembled or trigger locked, a group of
private gun-owners brought suit claiming the laws
violated their Second Amendment right to bear
arms. The federal trial court in Washington D.C.
said that the Second Amendment applies only to
militias, such as the National Guard, and not to
private gun ownership. The U.S. Court of Appeals
for the District of Columbia Circuit disagreed,
voting two to one that the Second Amendment does
in fact protect private gun owners. In a 5-4
decision, the Court held that the Second
Amendment protects an individual right to possess
a firearm unconnected with service in a militia,
and to use that firearm for traditionally lawful
purposes.
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Sources
www.firearmsandliberty.com Had all the Court
cases that delt with the and amendment the only
thing it lacked was the recent court
case. www.oyez.com Had the Recent court case DC
vs Heller www.usconstitution.com Had information
about the history of the second amendment and
info about how it is affecting us now. Current
Biography yearbook 1991 Had information about
James Brady and the Brady Bill Losing the vote
in Reese and Cruikshank By Robert M. Goldman Had
Information about Cruikshank and his court case.
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