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Undated:
The Second Amendment (Amendment II) to the
United States Constitution protects the right of the people to
keep and bear arms and was adopted on December 15, 1791 as part of the
Bill of Rights.[1][2][3][4]
The
Supreme Court ruled in the 2008
Heller decision that the right belongs to individuals for
self-defense[5][6][7]
while also including, as dicta, that the right is not unlimited and does
not preclude the existence of certain long-standing prohibitions such as those
forbidding "the possession of
firearms by
felons and the mentally ill" or restrictions on "the carrying of dangerous and
unusual weapons."[8][9]
State and
local governments are
limited to the same extent as the
federal government from infringing this right.[10]
The Second Amendment was based partially on the right to keep and bear arms in
English
common law and was influenced by the
English Bill of Rights of 1689.
Sir William Blackstone described this right as an auxiliary right,
supporting the natural rights of self-defense and resistance to oppression, and
the civic duty to act in concert in defense of the state.[11]
While both
James
Monroe and
John Adams
supported the Constitution being ratified, its most influential framer was
James Madison. In
Federalist No. 46, Madison wrote how a federal army could be kept in check
by state militias, "a standing army ... would be opposed [by] a militia." He
argued that state militias "would be able to repel the danger" of a federal
army, "It may well be doubted, whether a militia thus circumstanced could ever
be conquered by such a proportion of regular troops." He contrasted the federal
government of the United States to the European kingdoms, which he described as
"afraid to trust the people with arms," and assured that "the existence of
subordinate governments ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of
ambition".[12][13]
In
United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the Supreme Court ruled that, "The
right to bear arms is not granted by the Constitution; neither is it in any
manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second Amendments [sic]
means no more than that it shall not be infringed by Congress, and has no other
effect than to restrict the powers of the National Government."[14]
In
United States v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court ruled that the Second
Amendment did not protect weapon types not having a "reasonable relationship to
the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."[15][16]
In the twenty-first century, the amendment has been subjected
to renewed
academic inquiry and
judicial interest.[16]
In
District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), the Supreme Court handed down a
landmark decision that held the amendment protects an individual's right to
keep a gun for self-defense.[17][18]
This was the first time the Court had ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees
an individual's right to own a gun.[19][20][18]
In
McDonald v. Chicago (2010), the Court clarified that the Due Process
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Second Amendment against
state and local governments.[21]
In
Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016), the Supreme Court reiterated its
earlier rulings that "the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all
instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence
at the time of the founding" and that its protection is not limited to "only
those weapons useful in warfare."
The
debate between various organizations regarding
gun
control and
gun rights continues.[22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
Democratic Party on Gun Control ... We recognize that the
individual right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition,
and we will preserve Americans' Second Amendment right to own and use firearms.
We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation.
We understand the terrible consequences of gun violence; it serves as a reminder
that life is fragile, and our time here is limited and precious. We believe in
an honest, open national conversation about firearms. We can focus on effective
enforcement of existing laws, especially strengthening our background check
system, and we can work together to enact commonsense improvements--like
reinstating the assault weapons ban and closing the gun show loophole--so that
guns do not fall into the hands of those irresponsible, law-breaking few.
September 4, 2012
http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Democratic_Party_Gun_Control.htm
-- 2016 --
May 7: "Hillary Clinton wants to abolish the
Second Amendment," Trump said at a rally here. "Hillary Clinton wants to take
your guns away and she wants to abolish the Second Amendment."
Trump's wild claim comes on the heels of an unrelenting barrage of attacks the
newly minted presumptive Republican nominee has fired off against Clinton in
recent days.
Clinton has never argued for abolishing the Second Amendment but has called for
universal background checks and stricter controls on firearms.
Clinton spokesman Jesse Lehrich tweeted in response to Trump's claim: "It must
be liberating to just have no regard for facts whatsoever."
https://www.weareiowa.com/news/trump-says-clinton-wants-to-abolish-the-2nd-amendment/451681066
August 9: Donald Trump hints at
assassination of Hillary Clinton by gun rights supporters
Republican presidential nominee says ‘second amendment people’ could stop
Democrat choosing undesirable supreme court justices if she is elected
The volatile Republican nominee was speaking at
a rally in Wilmington, North Carolina, about the next president’s power to
appoint supreme court justices. “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish,
the second amendment,” said Trump, eliciting boos from the crowd.
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second
amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you what, that
will be a horrible day.”
The second amendment to the constitution protects the right of Americans to bear
arms. Trump has accused his Democratic rival of wanting to abolish it, a charge
that she denies.
His extraordinary remark on Tuesday was swiftly condemned by Democrats. Robby
Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, said: “This is simple – what Trump is saying
is dangerous. A person seeking to be the president of the United States should
not suggest violence in any way.”
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, where the Sandy Hook elementary school
shooting took place in Newtown in 2012,
went further in a tweet: “Don’t treat this as a political misstep. It’s an
assassination threat, seriously upping the possibility of a national tragedy &
crisis.”
British novelist Salman Rushdie then weighed in,
tweeting: “Of course the Trump flacks are now trying to confuse the issue,
but Senator Murphy is clear about what Trump meant.”
The claim was rejected by Jeff Sessions, a Republican senator from Alabama and
longtime Trump supporter. He responded on CNN: “Totally wrong. I don’t believe
that’s true. I don’t believe that’s at all what he meant.”
But Sessions acknowledged: “It may have been awkwardly phrased.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/aug/09/trump-gun-owners-clinton-judges-second-amendment
August 9: Trump's Second Amendment Line
Probably Won't Land Him in Jail ...
It's not clear if he was suggesting that people take up arms against a Clinton
administration, or against her nominees. In the most extreme view, you could
interpret his comment—which followed a digression on the death of Antonin Scalia—as
an incitement to violence against Clinton. That's how it appeared to many
people.
Trumpian opacity could protect him from prosecution. "I'm sure his defense will
be, 'Anyone would understand it as a joke and if they didn't that’s their
problem not mine, because I meant it as a satirical comment,'" ... If Trump can
plausibly claim that it never occurred to him that anyone would take him
seriously, the comment is not a threat under federal law.
https://www.wired.com/2016/08/trump-second-amendment-clinton/
-- 2017 --
December 28:
Second Amendment News By The Numbers: Bump Stock Ban Makes Trump More Of A Gun
Control President Than Obama Ever Was
Trump's most significant gun control policy achievement to date outstrips
Obama's by nearly a full order of magnitude.
Cries of "Obama’s going to take your guns!” were so loud in conservative circles
dating back a decade that very few people remember that the only two major gun
bills Obama signed into law actually expanded the rights of gun owners. One
was a measure that allowed Amtrak passengers to carry firearms in checked
baggage, and the other allowed the carry of firearms in national parks,
reversing President Reagan’s policy that required guns to be locked in the
trunks or glove compartments of vehicles upon entering national parks. Obama did
announce a set of “executive actions” aimed at better enforcement of existing
federal gun laws, but even
the Charles Koch-founded Cato Institute said of these executive actions that
“apoplectic opponents and overjoyed supporters are both probably overreacting.”
https://abovethelaw.com/2018/12/second-amendment-news-by-the-numbers-bump-stock-ban-makes-trump-more-of-a-gun-control-president-than-obama-ever-was/
-- 2018 --
February 23: Donald Trump stokes a totally
false idea on the 2nd Amendment in CPAC speech
President Donald Trump spent the last two days insisting that he was ready to
find compromise on gun control measures in the wake of the murders of 17 people
at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida last week.
He expressed support for expanded background checks and for raising the age to
buy a rifle from 18 to 21 and argued that he wasn't at all worried about
blowback from the National Rifle Association.
That all changed during Trump's speech Friday morning at the Conservative
Political Action Conference just outside Washington. Talking about the stakes of
the 2018 election, Trump said that if Democrats win back control of Congress
"they'll take away your 2nd Amendment."
As he closed his speech, Trump again said Democrats want to repeal the 2nd
Amendment: "They will do that, they will do that," he said.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/trump-cpac-guns/index.html
February 28: Trump says "Take guns first,
get due process second.
In response to a point by VP Mike Pence on Gun Violence Restraining Orders,
Trump says firearms should be taken away from citizens who pose a risk before
getting due process.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4716589/trump-take-guns-first-due-process-second
March 1: Trump’s Misleading Gun Rhetoric
In a bipartisan meeting with members of Congress, President Donald Trump made
false and misleading claims about his predecessors’ actions on gun control
legislation and shootings in “gun-free zones.”
During
the meeting, Democrats repeatedly told the president that as a Republican he
is in an unique position to convince other Republicans to buck the National
Rifle Association and pass a gun-control bill. Trump agreed, describing himself
at the meeting as the “biggest fan of the Second Amendment.”
Sen. Christopher Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, told Trump, “It’s going to have
to be you that brings the Republicans to the table on this because right now the
gun lobby would stop it in its tracks.”
Trump: I like that responsibility, Chris. I really do. I think it’s
time. It’s time that a president stepped up, and we haven’t had them — and I’m
talking Democrat and Republican presidents. They have not stepped up.
Past presidents have “stepped up,” but with mixed results.
https://www.factcheck.org/2018/03/trumps-misleading-gun-rhetoric/
March 1: 'Gun-grabber-in-chief':
Conservatives turn on Trump as threat to confiscate guns prompts Second
Amendment-related outrage
'He's a fraud and has betrayed us twice now'
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-gun-control-confiscate-second-amendment-right-bear-arms-nra-conservative-republicans-a8234606.html
March 1: “Nonsensical,” “Kooky,” “Idiotic”:
The Far Right Seethes Over Trump’s Second Amendment Flip-Flop
Even die-hard Trump supporters worry he is uninformed,
or worse. “Trump bought into the dogma of the left,” says one gun hard-liner.
“It was such a disorienting thing for him to say that mirrors the contempt the
left has for conservatives and gun owners in this country, while directly buying
into our fears.”
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/far-right-seethes-over-trumps-second-amendment-flip-flop
March 19: Suozzi Suggests Using the ‘Second
Amendment’ on Trump
Democratic rep’s campaign forwarded a quote from Thomas Jefferson to ‘take arms’
against rulers
Democratic Rep.
Tom Suozzi suggested at a town hall that
President Donald Trump’s opponents could take up arms against the president.
The New York Democrat was speaking at an event in Huntington, New York, last
week and said it was important to put pressure on the president, in a video
obtained by the New York Post.
“This is where the Second Amendment comes in, quite frankly,” Suozzi said.
“Because you know, what if the president was to ignore the courts? What would
you do? What would we do?”
In response, someone in the audience asked what the Second Amendment entails.
“The Second Amendment is the right to bear arms,” he said.
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Chris Martin said the
video was “incredibly disturbing.”
https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/suozzi-suggest-using-second-amendment-trump
March 21: Following a series of mass
shootings in the US in recent years, there has been little in the way of
sweeping gun-control reforms.
On the federal level, at least, the interest and attention in new legislation
has led to almost no action in decades, despite numerous polls showing
widespread public support for measures like strengthened background checks and
banning certain types of high-capacity gun magazines and military-style assault
rifles.
The Trump administration has issued a regulatory ban on bump-stock modifications
that allow semi-automatic weapons to fire like machine guns, and there have been
some tweaks to the background check database for gun-store purchases.
Last March, Donald Trump entertained the notion of more ambitious,
"comprehensive" legislation, telling senators pro-gun lobbyists had little power
over him. But there's been no such talk from the president since.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41489552
March 27: Not So Long Ago, the Second
Amendment Didn’t Guarantee the Right to Own a Gun
In the minds of most gun enthusiasts, the idea that the Second Amendment was
consciously designed by the Founders as a bedrock right to horde shooting irons,
either for self-protection or to overthrow future “tyrants,” is beyond question.
But as retired Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens
reminds us today, the personal right to bear arms as a premise of
constitutional law is actually less than a decade old.
For over 200 years after the adoption of the Second Amendment, it was uniformly
understood as not placing any limit on either federal or state authority to
enact gun control legislation. In 1939 the Supreme Court unanimously
held that Congress could prohibit the possession of a sawed-off shotgun
because that weapon had no reasonable relation to the preservation or efficiency
of a “well regulated militia.”
That precedent held until June of 2008, when by a 5–4 margin in the case of
District of Columbia
v. Heller the court finally recognized a right to civilian
firearm ownership for self-protection.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/03/2nd-amendment-hasnt-always-guaranteed-the-right-to-own-guns.html
May 5: While speaking to National Rifle
Associate members in Dallas, President Trump said our Second Amendment rights
were under siege, but they would never be under siege while he was president.
https://www.wthitv.com/content/national/481774541.html
July 21: Citing Brett Kavanaugh’s
Interpretation of an Unlimited 2nd Amendment, Governor Cuomo, Members of
Congressional Black Caucus and New York Congressional Delegation Call on Senate
to Block His Confirmation
While Washington Continues to Block Meaningful Gun Control, Governor Announces
New $3 Million Investment to Combat Gun Violence and Help Victims
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/citing-brett-kavanaugh-s-interpretation-unlimited-2nd-amendment-governor-cuomo-members
August 8:
The Second Amendment may soon supplant
abortion as a litmus test for federal judges.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/08/second-amendment-new-litmus-test-for-judges/
October 31:
Constitution’s Second Amendment gun rights invoked in birthright citizenship
debate
President Trump’s challenge this week to the long-held understanding that
the Constitution guarantees citizenship to children born on U.S. soil, even if
their mother was in the country illegally, has invoked another hotly debated
constitutional right — to bear arms.
Gun control advocates have long questioned whether the Constitution’s seemingly
straightforward Second Amendment “right of the people to keep and bear arms”
really means that the lady next door can legally keep a semiautomatic rifle in
her bedroom. Courts and constitutional scholars have long sided with gun rights
advocates who say it does.
Trump this week questioned whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s seemingly
straightforward guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United
States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United
States” applies to children of immigrants here illegally. Courts and
constitutional scholars have long sided with immigration rights advocates who
say it does.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/10/31/constitutions-second-amendment-gun-rights-invoked-in-birthright-citizenship-debate/
-- 2019 --
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