Argumentative Essay On Gun Control

Equally relevant to the issue of gun control is the protection of the rights given to us by our founding fathers. The Second Amendment forbids the government from “infringing” upon the citizens right to “keep and bear arms,” which the majority of intensified gun control legislation, at either the state or federal level, threatens to take away. Our Supreme Court has already qualified that the Second Amendment gives citizens, not just a collective right, but an individual right as well. Supreme Court decision on the McDonald vs. Chicago case is one such example. Although the Court acknowledged that "the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens ' militia by taking away their arms was the reason that [the] right…was codified in a written Constitution." The Court asserted that "individual self-defense…was the central component of the right itself" (Issues & Controversies). The creators of the Second Amendment knew that the government could potentially have the power to take the freedom of the people 's individual right to carry arms. To ensure that they could not do such thing, they placed the Second Amendment in our Constitution. Not surprisingly, our founding fathers were not just worried about a militia to protect the new nation, as asserted by those who say the Second Amendment is a collective right, they were emphatic that the citizens could rise against the republic should it become corrupt (Halbrook, Stephen P., and Calif). In fact, Thomas