The Lack Of Sufficient Gun Control Laws - 1595 Words

The United States of America has about 270 million privately held firearms, with about one gun per person (Fisher). This is more than 25% of the worlds registered firearms, and the population of the United States accounts for a meager 4 percent of the world. The reason for the staggering number of guns is because of the second amendment, which states, â€Å"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.† (U.S. Const. am. 2) Because of the vague nature of the wording, different people interpret it in different ways. Some say that â€Å"the right of people to keep and bear Arms† indicates individual ownership of guns, while others believe that the†¦show more content†¦If law-abiding gun owners cannot obtain rifle ammunition, or face substantial difficulty in finding ammunition available and at reasonable prices because government entities are banning such ammunition , then the Second Amendment is at risk† responds republican Chuck Grassley, the Senior United States Senator from Iowa to a move by the Obama administration to ban a type of ammunition that pierces police body armor. The rationale is that the type of ammunition that is sought to be banned is a popular type of ammo in the top-selling AR-15 rifle. Banning this specific ammo would deliberately stop gun owners from being able to use their own guns. What these gun-rights activists are failing to understand is that the second amendment indicates something different from what gun owners want it to say. In 1991, John Paul Stevens, a retired justice of the Supreme Court who served for over 30 years, remarked that the second amendment â€Å"has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud† in response to vigorous campaigns by the National Rifle Association (NRA) claiming that federal regulations severely invaded Americans’ Second Amendme nt rights. He recounts how â€Å"When I joined the court in 1975, that holding was generally understood as limiting the scope of the Second Amendment to uses of arms that were related to military activities. During the years when Warren Burger was chief justice, from 1969 to 1986, no judge or