Right to Keep and Bear Arms

-- Second Amendment to the Constitution

The words of the Second Amendment, written two centuries ago, lie close to the heart of one of the most divisive issues in contemporary American public life: gun control. On the one hand, gunfire claims a constant, daily toll of American lives, from suicide and accidents even more than from violent crime. Every year or so, a mass murderer, often armed with one or more semiautomatic military-type assault weapons, mows down a dozen or so victims. On the other hand, gun ownership is a core value to millions of Americans, and perhaps a majority of all American households have at least one gun. Most want a gun as protection against the very violence of our streets. To many of these gun owners, moreover, their right to their weapons is enshrined in the Bill of Rights.

In the following pages we will examine the relationship of gun ownership and gun violence in American life, and examine some of the major arguments made both in favor and against stricter gun controls. It will be argued that while a strong case can be made for gun registration, strict exclusionary or confiscatory gun regulations are like,.to be ineffective or even counterproductive, as enforcement would prove almost impossible, while the very attempt to enforce would be profoundly controversial and possibly disruptive

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o the psychopathology of the mass murder or the threat-display motive of the gang member. The new level of firepower has contributed to a frightening change of "tactics" among inner-city gangs. The old-fashioned group confrontation, as in "West Side Story," is too dangerous when both sides are heavily armed. Just as in modern warfare, the development has been towards mobility and ambush tactics -specifically the "drive-by shooting," in which bystanders are all too likely to be hit. It is worth noting that the last time similar tactics became part of American culture was in the gangland-war days of the Roaring Twenties, Prohibition, and the Thompson submachine gun. The assault weapons has thus become the public symbol of a new and heightened public concern about guns and gun violence (Gun Control, 1990, pp. 39-40). One notable political effect has been a sharp recent erosion in the long-standing power of the National Rifle Association to turn back any and all efforts at gun control (Bjarnadottir, 1990, pp. 39-40). Traditionally, the NRA could number professional law enforcement as among its allies. Policemen shared the NRAs conservative values, and often had grown up immersed in the American "gun culture," owning guns the
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Approximate Word count = 2067
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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