Our Disappearing Rights Essay, Research Paper

Our Disappearing Rights

We were born into a nation where freedom was the ultimate privilage. We have the freedom to say what we want, meet with whomever we want, and be whomever we want.

We also were given the right to defend ourselves from threats foreign or domestic. We currently live in a nation that guarantees us the right to bear arms. However, this cherished right is slowly being taken away from us.

Gun control advocates are calling for more restrictions on the lawful purchase of guns. They have already successfully restricted the type and size of gun that can be bought , as well as the capacity of the clip for handguns. All these restrictions are an effect to keep guns out if the hands of criminals. However, the vast majority of criminals who use handguns obtain them through sources that are unaffected by gun laws. If you know where you can buy an untraceable handgun off of street corners, and pay a lot less money. In order to buy a gun from a legal source today, a person must fill out more paperwork than they would to buy a car; and pay inflated prices to cover government taxes. All these efforts even though each year more people are killed with a car than a gun.

The author of “Case Could Shape Future of Gun Control” presents both sides of the gun control argument over whether the right to possess firearms is an individual right or one held only by those in military structures. Both sides contend that the wording and historical events support their views on gun control. The anti-gun group pushes the for “militia” only theory. That the Founders could not have wanted weapons in the hands of malcontents, rebelling against the government they fought so hard to create. That the United States would become open season for the various backwoods militia groups and terrorists.

The pro-gun groups bring forth the ideas (and I agree with them) that the founders of our nation and the framers of the constitution were well aware of the dangers of a run away governmental bureaucracy and had a very good reason for the inclusion of the Second Amendment to the constitution. So that in future times the people had a way of protecting themselves against the possibility of being betrayed by the government. It was in fact one of the chief complaints of the colonists in 1765 that the kings had disarmed the people. The founders felt so strongly in the of right to keep and bear arms that they included it into the Constitution, even though all of the states already had such provisions in their own constitutions..

As a society we have many individual rights protecting us. The right to trial by jury, against unreasonable search and seizure, and to due process. All of these basic rights that we have stem form the experiences of our early founders, the grievances they had against the British Empire. There is a very good reason the right to bear arms was included as the Second Amendment in our Bill of Rights.

If the individual right to own guns is upheld in the Fifth Court there could be many changes in current gun control laws, and any future law made will have to pass a set of criteria to make sure its constitutional before it can be passed. Laws are changing slowly, trying to keep up with the changes in social perspective. What we as a society are willing to put with is being questioned, and one of the best results I’ve seen come as a result is the careful study our rights. We need to guard them because they are disappearing quickly.

The right to own guns is an indispensable part of our society. While many gun control advocates bring up the number of people wounded or killed each year by guns, they ignore the millions of times per year that guns are used for defensive purposes. To ban handguns from private citizens would do no more than ensure the safely of criminals.