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The private ownership of guns is an especially contentious political topic in the United States, where the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution states:
The meaning of this text remains fiercely debated, with some saying that the amendment only refers to official bodies under government control (such as the National Guard) and others saying that the amendment always guaranteed the right of independent individuals to possess and carry firearms. The first side argues that only "well regulated militia" have the right to keep and bear Arms. Others say the phrase "the people" uncontroversially applies to individuals rather than an organized collective. They point out that in the following statement books could not be restricted to University graduates only: "A well graduated Academia being necessary to the prosperity of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Books shall not be infringed."
Earlier drafts of the United States Bill of Rights had much lengthier text that was trimmed as part of an overall effort by the Founding Fathers to shorten a document that was then perceived to be too wordy. Some constitutional scholars ascribe significance to these drafts, which tend to support a broader application of the Second Amendment. The constitutions of over 40 states provide more clearly written protection for the individual right to firearms ownership.
Gun rights advocates point to the writings of the Founders to indicate that the intent of the Second Amendment was to assure that the ordinary individual citizens of America would have the freedom of choice to own whatever sorts of weapons they wished. Here is a sample of those statements....:
The US Supreme Court has never directly ruled on the actual meaning of the Second Amendment despite having had a variety of opportunities to do so. Gun rights advocates point out that the court has made statements that refer to this right as an individual right. These statements are found in cases unrelated to the Second Amendment. Gun control advocates point out that the US Supreme Court has never taken a Second Amendment case and used it to strike down any gun control law. The de facto position of the Executive Branch from 1934 until 2002 was that the Second Amendment protects a collective right. In 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft and Solicitor General Theodore Olson announced their interpretation that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.
For some of the opinions from the US Supreme Court which mention the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right of citizens, see cases: Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857, U.S. v. Cruikshank, Casey v. Planned Parenthood (1992), Johnson v. Eisentrager, Poe v. Ullman, Konigsberg v. State Bar, Duncan v. Louisiana, Laird v. Tatum, Spencer v. Kemna (1998), Albright v. Oliver and U.S. v. Verdugo-Urquidez.
Certain local jurisdictions, such as New York, had begun trying to restrict firearms ownership from minorities with registration schemes as early as 1911 and the former slave states had tried to prohibit black Americans from owning any sort of firearms starting shortly after the 13th Amendment was enacted officially freeing all slaves in 1865.
Some gun control advocates claim that only those types of weapons available to the public at the time the Second Amendment was ratified are protected by the Second Amendment; thus, they claim, Americans should be allowed only flint-lock muskets. Critics of that stance, however, contend that by that logic, freedom of speech should be restricted to the manual printing press, and word-of-mouth.
While the technology of firearm known to the Founding Fathers was primitive by comparison to today's weapons, individuals at that time were free to own a greater amount of destructive force than today. At the time of the nation's founding, individuals were free to own any weapon known, including cannons, field pieces and even fully-armed warships of the day. In fact, up until the National Firearms Act of 1934, ordinary Americans could lawfully own any weapons available anywhere, including anything the US military used, such as tanks, artillery, bombs and even high-explosives. No licenses and no registration were required.
Most people on both sides agree that so-called "Weapons of Mass Destruction" (i.e., biological, chemical and nuclear weapons) cannot have any legitimate purpose in the hands of individuals and that even in non-hostile hands these weapons pose a serious threat due to the risk of even simple accidents during storage or transport. As such, most agree that even the broad protections of the Second Amendment for the right to keep and bear arms do not apply to "WMD's".
However, a few on the gun-rights side (notably Fourteenth Amendment incorporation?
People on both sides claim that the gun rights lobby is among the most effective and organized single-issue political groups in the United States. However, in-spite of that common perception and the best efforts of the gun rights lobby, the gun control/gun ban lobby has still managed to enact many gun control laws.
The National Rifle Association (NRA) is the largest and best-known gun rights and gun sports advocacy group. Originally formed in 1871, after the American Civil War, to promote marksmanship skills among the general population, the NRA was mainly a shooting-sports association made up of small, local clubs. It became a powerful lobbying force after the passage of the Gun Control Act of 1968, which made gun control a national issue. Virtually all pro-gun-control groups see the NRA's positions as extremist, especially since Second Amendment Sisters, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, The Pink Pistols and Gun Owners of America are among the groups in this category.
While gun control is not strictly a partisan issue, there is more support for gun control in the Democratic Party than the Republican Party. Traditionally, regional differences are greater than partisan ones on this issue. Southern and Western states are predominantly pro-gun while coastal states like California, Massachusetts, and New York favor gun control. Other areas, including the Midwest, are mixed.
Some questions of regulatory policy include:
The field of political research regarding firearms suffers from the same contention as the issue of firearms itself. Almost every prominent researcher has seen their works attacked by those uncomfortable with their conclusions, and some have had their work investigated as academic fraud. Nonetheless, some influential individuals include:
In some cases, no term for an element of a highly contentious issue exists that is considered fully neutral by both sides. In these cases, the most neutral term is used.
The term "gun control" refers to attempts by society (generally by government or "the State") to limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of "guns" -- in this context, generally handguns and long guns. Weapons normally produced and intended for military and paramilitary (e.g. SWAT team) use, such as fully automatic weapons, are especially contentious.
Fully automatic weapons have been restricted in the United States since the National Firearms Act of 1934. Private owners must obtain permission from the US Treasury Dept., pass an extensive background check, fully register the firearm and continually update the owner's address and location of the firearm and pay a $200 transfer tax. Some states require state permission as well. Otherwise, they are available only to police or military personnel.
There are only a few hundred thousand lawfully owned fully automatic weapons. The bulk of these are owned and used in the motion picture industry.
The Clinton administration BATF study of illegal firearms in the black market estimated that as many as 4 million illegal fully automatic firearms had either been illegally smuggled into the USA or illegally constructed within the USA. No new legal full-autos have been manufactured for the civilian population since 1986, causing the economic rules of supply and demand to drive the prices of existing automatic weapons well above the cost of manufacturing and distributing them. See also: Assault weapons ban (USA).
In the U.S., the major federal gun control legislation is the 1968 Gun Control Act, passed shortly after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King. The act required that guns carry serial numbers and implemented a tracking system to determine the purchaser of a gun whose make, model, and serial number are known. It also prohibited gun ownership by convicted felons and certain other individuals. The Act was updated in the 1990s, mainly to add a mechanism for the criminal history of gun purchasers to be checked at the point of sale.
A patchwork of laws exists at state and local levels, with the state of Illinois, Washington, DC, and the city of New York having among the more restrictive limits; New York's Sullivan Act was passed in 1911. Many states implemented criminal background checks or "waiting periods" for handgun (pistol and revolver) purchasers in response to the gun control lobby in the 1980s. More recent lobbying efforts have resulted in the passage of laws making it a crime to leave guns in locations accessible to children.
Recent changes in the political landscape have brought about legislative initiatives to make it legal for common citizens to carry concealed guns with them for defense. Most states have various requirements for training and licensing for concealed carry. The notable exception is Vermont, which has never had any such restrictions in its history. A handful of other states had liberalized concealed carry regulations, allowing almost all law-abiding adult citizens with appropriate training to obtain carry permits. The trend toward liberalizing concealed carry regulations, however, did not begin in earnest until 1987. In that year, Florida became the first major state to liberalize its concealed carry regulation. Many other states have followed, for a total of 37 states having such laws on the books as of April 2004. Notably, no state that has passed a shall-issue law has yet repealed it.
Like Vermont, Alaska has no requirement for a license or permit for any lawful gun owner to carry concealed handguns in public. However, unlike Vermont, Alaska has issued such permits to its residents in the past, and continues to issue new permits. There are two reasons for this. First, several other states honor Alaska's permits, while no state (apart from Vermont and now Alaska) recognizes the concealed carry rights of non-residents without permits, even if carry without a permit is allowed in the person's home state. Second, Alaska's permit meets the federal criteria to exempt its holders from federal background checks to purchase firearms.
The status of these laws in the USA has changed dramatically since 1986, as seen below:
Definitions:
Both sides actively debate the relevance of self-defense in modern society. Some scholars, such as John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, claim to have discovered a positive correlation between gun control legislation and crimes in which criminals victimize law-abiding citizens. Lott asserts that criminals ignore gun control laws, and are effectively deterred by armed intended victims.
Advocates of gun control, however, assert that because criminals obtain guns by stealing them from law-abiding gun owners, restricting their availability would decrease supply to the criminal element.
Advocates of rights to gun ownership (gun rights) counter that since law abiding gun owners vastly outnumber the criminals who steal guns, the only way to eliminate this avenue of criminal gun ownership is to fully disarm all law abiding gun owners. Even then, just as with illegal drugs and illegal full-autos, the criminals would continue to smuggle guns into the USA from other nations. The Scotland Yard report on the illegal importation of firearms into the U.K., following the near total gun ban in that nation, is cited as an example of what happens when firearms are banned for law abiding citizens. The USA experience with Alcohol Prohibition and the current "War on Drugs" being other prime examples cited by gun rights advocates.
Non-defensive uses of guns, such as hunting, varmint control and the sport of target shooting, are often lost in the debate despite being the most common reasons for private gun ownership. This is perhaps because focusing on defense allows for the broadest coverage of firearms - it would be difficult to justify a weapon such as the Tec-9 (see Assault weapons ban (USA)) on sportsmanship grounds.
Despite the fact that no links to liberalized concealed-carry laws and increasing rates of crime have been demonstrated, these laws are still highly contentious. However, no state has seen cause to outlaw Concealed Carry again.
The numbers of lives saved or lost by gun ownership are hotly debated. Problems include the difficulty of accounting accurately for confrontations in which no shots are fired, and jurisdictional differences in the definition of "crime". For example, some have argued that American statistics tend to over-count violent crimes, while English statistics tend to under-count them.
Proponents of gun control frequently argue that carrying a concealed pistol would be of no practical use for personal self-defense. Proponents of gun rights argue that in the US, there are up to 2.5 million incidents per year in which a lawfully-armed citizen averts a crime by confronting a would-be attacker with a loaded gun. Those who advance these statistics point out that the deterrent effect would disproportionately benefit women, who are often targets of violent crime.
Gun control advocates insist that personal guns are an avoidable source of domestic accidents. The number of domestic accidents involving guns is hotly debated, however. For example, a commonly cited statistic concerning "child gun deaths" includes fatalities of individuals up to 25 years of age, including gang members and armed criminals. The American National Safety Council reports that there were 214 unintentional firearms-related deaths among Americans aged 0-19 in 1999, and a further 83 deaths where the intention could not be determined.
Another position taken by gun rights advocates is that an armed citizenry is the population's last line of defense against tyranny by their own government. They point out that many soldiers in the American Revolution were ordinary citizens using their privately owned firearms. Gun control advocates answer that it is unrealistic to suppose that private citizens could oppose a government which controls the full power of the US Armed Forces, were it to become tyrannical. Also, it is claimed that the people's power to replace elected officials by voting is sufficient to keep the government in check.
Indeed, there may be a historical regularity in that totalitarian regimes pass gun control legislation as a first step of their reign of terror. The sequence is supposed to be gun registration, followed some time later by confiscation. Nazi legislation is the most famous example of this sequence, but it also occurred in Marxist regimes.
However, this does not indicate that gun controls inevitably lead to totalitarianism. Gun control advocates point out that countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia have strict controls on gun ownership with democratic systems of government and low crime rates.
Gun rights advocates counter that the current benevolent nature of a government does not predict it's future. Also, according to the U.S. Dept. of Justice, crime rates have risen in the United Kingdom even as guns have become more regulated. http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/abstract/cjusew96.htm
Invasion by hostile outside forces is another reason gun rights advocates oppose registration. If captured, the associated records would provide invaders with a means of locating and eliminating law-abiding resistance fighters. Location and capture of such records is a standard doctrine taught to military intelligence officers. Registration aside, gun rights advocates point out that an armed citizenry is a strong deterrent against a foreign invasion. However, the most notable example of this argument - Switzerland's neutrality in the Second World War - has taken a major blow from the findings of Swiss complicity in German war crimes.
In the U.S., some of the controversy surrounding this issue is based on interpretation of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which gun control advocates claim protects "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" only as it relates to "a well-regulated militia". Gun rights advocates, however, view the provision as an absolute guarantee of the individual right to keep and bear arms.
On December 1, 2003 the United States Supreme Court refused to hear a Second Amendment challenge to California's Assault Weapons Ban. The High Court's action leaves undisturbed an earlier ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Coalition to Stop Gun Violence
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