The subject of gun control is hotly debated not only by the media and special interest groups but also by law enforcement agencies, and ordinary citizens alike. Some feel that since the Second Amendment was written before the advent of modern firearms that it is outdated. Others believe that it is an inalienable right that must be preserved in order for Americans to remain a free people. The Second Amendment states: “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.”(archives.gov) In the book Reducing Gun Violence In America published by Johns Hopkins University 2013. The authors point out that the Second Amendment has been continuously controlled on one level or another since the 19th century. Take for example the decision of the Supreme Court in the Heller vs. D.C. case. Even though the court found that Washington D.C.’s total ban on handguns was unconstitutional, it was also the court’s opinion that“[l]ike most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” Indeed, “[f]rom Blackstone through the 19th-century cases,” the Court recounted, “commentators and courts routinely explained that the right was not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”(Reducing Gun Violence In …show more content…
John Lott’s work More Guns Less Crime, 3rd edition University of Chicago press 2010, in which Mr. Lott put years of research into and covers data recorded over a 16 year period prior to publishing the first edition in 1998.(More Guns Less Crime Introduction). The second edition published in 2000 and finally the third edition ten years later. Mr. Lott points to the trend of a falling crime rate coinciding with an increase in the volume of legally carried handguns by the general citizenry. One example is considerably higher percentages of violent crime and murders in states that ban the carrying of concealed