Gun ownership is attributed to a specific history of the United States and is reflected in the Constitution as a fundamental right, although many interpret it differently.
Salvador Ramos, the author of the massacre in which 19 children, 2 teachers and himself died at a school in Texas (USA), recently turned 18.
To commemorate this occasion, he presented him with two AR15-type semi-automatic rifles and 370 rounds of ammunition, one of the most common models in previous mass attacks.
Ramos, a young man with adjustment problems and erratic behavior according to his relatives, bought the guns completely legally.
He went into a store, placed his order, paid, and left.
This may seem counterintuitive in any country, but not in the United States where to own and carry a gun is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. And more specifically, by the Second Amendment.
What is it and why did it appear?
On December 15, 1791, the then brand new United States ratified the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, affirming the fundamental rights of its citizens.
In this way, gun ownership was on a par with freedom of expression, press, religion or assembly.
In 1791, the United States occupied about a third of its current territory in an attempt to expand westward. The victory over Great Britain in the War of Independence (1775-83), in which the militia played a key role, was still new.
Militia were groups of men who had gathered to protect their communities, cities, colonies, and had gathered since the country declared independence in 1776. Their main long gun was the rifle, an infantry device used until the 19th century with a variety of effective shooting. at approximately 100 meters and can be fired approximately three times per minute.
At the time when American cultural identity was being formed, many saw regular soldiers as tools in the service of power, capable of crushing citizens, and believed that the best way to defend themselves was to carry their own weapons and, if necessary, to carry their own. , organize into militias.
In fact, the anti-federalists (opponents of a strong central government) denied the existence of a professional army, although it was established, among other things, as it was considered necessary in the event of a war against a foreign enemy.
Thus, after the Constitution was ratified in 1788, James Madison, one of the “Founding Fathers” and later President of the United States, drafted the Second Amendment with the aim of strengthening militias in the States.
And while the Second Amendment did not limit the government’s ability to enforce the law by force, it took away the power to disarm citizens who wanted to defend themselves.
One change, two looks
For years, advocates of civilian gun ownership saw the Second Amendment as securing their rights.
“The Second Amendment remains critical to protecting the rights of law-abiding gun owners,” the National Rifle Association (NRA) website states.
The NRA, one of the most influential interest groups in US politics with 5.5 million members, opposes most proposals to strengthen gun regulations.
Proponents of this position argue that the Second Amendment’s “right of the people to own and bear arms” amounts to an individual constitutional right to own firearms, making any prohibitive or restrictive regulation unconstitutional.
However, those who oppose gun ownership focus more on the first part of the text of the Second Amendment, meaning “a well-organized militia.”
They argue that the drafters of the 1791 Constitution did not aim to give individual citizens the right to own guns, but rather to create a collective right of defense in case of external attack.
In this way, they feel that people should not have the right to bear firearms, and that federal, state, and municipal authorities can regulate, limit, or ban such weapons without being unconstitutional.
DC vs Heller
In fact, the view that the right to bear arms was linked to collective defense forces was imposed by a Supreme Court sentence in 1939.
According to this decision, state and local governments had the authority to prohibit individual gun ownership, as in the District of Columbia (Washington DC, US capital).
This took nearly seventy years, but in 2008 the Supreme Court’s D.C. v. (Dick) Heller is a local police officer suing for being prevented from registering a personal gun.
The United States’ highest court ruled, by a vote of four to five, that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to own firearms for lawful use.
While the US Supreme Court recognized that this right was not unlimited (it excludes large-caliber weapons such as machine guns, for example), it ruled that a complete prohibition of a citizen from carrying a gun in the home as such a restriction was unconstitutional. Violates the purpose of self-defense of the Second Amendment.
Since then, lower courts have had to deal with numerous lawsuits against assault weapon bans, registration requirements, and apparent carry bans imposed by some states.
There is a fierce political and social disagreement about the advisability of allowing or prohibiting individual firearm possession in the United States today, and this is particularly exacerbated by the tragedies that occurred at Uvalde Elementary School on Tuesday.
Right now, those who defend this special right are winning.
source: Noticias
