THE RIGHT TO OWN GUNS-2nd AMENDMENT

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.

That which I write about the Second Amendment perhaps is clouded my own opinion. After reading the history and laws related to the 2^nd Amendment you can see that there is still no clear opinion as to what the 2nd permits an individual can possess. I feel that owning a personal gun is a privilege that can be regulate by Federal law not State law; it is not a right.

The 2^nd Amendment deals with “militia” not individuals and was written at the era when there was a distrust of standing armies controlled by a national government. The Continental Congress armies of the revolution were composed of States’ militias.

The original intent of this Amendment was to preserve States’ rights of having armed militia; not for the individual to own weapons for personal use. Of course it stands to reason that he (a sexist society) had to have at least one gun to fulfill his obligation as a militiaman.

It was a compromise between the Federalist led by Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams. Who believed in a strong central government and the Anti-Federalist championed by Alexander Hamilton, George Washington, John Jay, and John Adams.as Advocates?

The conflict which had begun in the Continental Congress gradually became moot as the individual states stopped having organized militia.  There was no true challenge to the Individual right until after the Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago and the passing of Firearms Act of 1934.

In 1939 SCOPUS 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.” This had to do with the transportation of a sawed off shotgun.

In 1968 after the assassinations of JFK and King Congress passed the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 and the Gun Control Act of 1968

In 1994 The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 produces a 10-year federal ban on the manufacture of new semi-automatic assault weapons. It limited magazines to 10 rounds and defined assault guns that individual could not possess but unfortunately this law expired in 2003 and was not renewed.

After 70 uncontested years in 2008 a more definitive opinion was stated. The case was the District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), in which the Supreme Court examined the Second Amendment in exacting detail. In a narrow 5–4 majority, and held that self-defense was the “central component” of the amendment and that the District of Columbia’s “prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense” to be unconstitutional.

This was the first of several rulings on the issue of individual rights of gun ownership.

More recently, the Supreme Court reinforced its Heller ruling in its Caetano v. Massachusetts (2016) decision. The Court found that the lower "Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was wrong in the three reasons it offered for why the state could ban personal possession or use of a “stun gun” without violating the Second Amendment.

Thus you can see that there is still no clear opinion as to what the 2nd permits an individual can possess.

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. The amendment addresses citizenship rights and equal protection of the laws

 Section 1 reads “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

This section is also important in determining the right to vote.

Congress should and could make appropriate laws that will stand the SCOTUS challenges.