Due to the prevalence of guns in today’s society and the amount of recent mass murders, Congress has needed to review the effectiveness and constitutionality of firearms regulation. The obstacle persists because there are many people either for the laws or against them, but in the aftermath of shootings such as the Aurora, CO movie theater shooting and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, banning semiautomatic weapons has been a topic on everyone’s mind. Guns are nothing new for the United States, dating back to the beginning of our nation. The Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution even states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear …show more content…
Kennedy was assassinated in the streets of Dallas, Texas on November 22nd, 1963, the country finally realized the lack of gun regulation and debate broke out around guns. The assassination brought forth the Gun Control Act of 1968, which prohibited transfers of firearms except among licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. This Act also required more record keeping in terms of firearms. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms constructed in 1972, and was used to enforce the firearm laws that were being enacted. Years passed and a tragic event happened in the U.S. The attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan happened. Fortunately Reagan survived but his assistant James Brady was paralyzed. Due to this, Congress passed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act of 1993, also referred to as the Brady Bill. This law made it mandatory for a background check to be performed to persons planning on purchasing a firearm from a federally licensed dealer. The Brady Bill was the cause for the establishment of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, (NICS), which made possible for the FBI to conduct the now mandatory background checks. They also established a five-day waiting period when purchasing a handgun, in hopes that high-risk individuals would not wait and would end up not receiving the firearm. In 1994, Congress passed another gun control law known as the Assault Weapons Ban (AWB). Defining what an assault weapon is tends