The Second Amendment has been a part of the United States Constitution since 1789. It secures the right of the people to bear arms but it’s been challenged more than any other amendment over the years. Impressively, every time the amendment has come under fire, it’s only managed to come back stronger.
The first time the Second Amendment was cited by the Supreme Court was to deliver the Nunn v. Georgia verdict that overturned a handgun ban. The term “the people” was later expanded to include the Second Amendment rights of citizens to include legal aliens as well.
The rights of gun owners have also been expanded in cases like Printz v. United States which reduced the limitations on waiting periods due to federal oversight. Later cases like the 2002 United States v. Emerson gave gun rights to citizens previously deprived of them such as gun owners with a restraining order. As late as 2016, the 21st Century Cures Act added to the list of legal gun owners by reversing the decision that mentally ill individuals like veterans with PTSD were barred from gun ownership.
There have even been challenges in how you keep your firearms in your own home. The District of Columbia v. Heller allowed firearm owners to keep their guns in their homes even if they were loaded without a trigger lock applied.
Some of the challenges to the Second Amendment have been on a larger, general scale as well. The 2009 McDonald v. Chicago case, for instance, allowed all U.S. citizens to own private firearms after incidents like Chicago trying to instate a private-ownership ban. This was shortly followed by the United States v. Day verdict in 2010 that declared firearms a right to any law-abiding citizen.
We’ve even seen less direct attacks at the right to bear arms shut down over the years. In just 2018, the U.S. District Court Cheif Judge Ramona v. Manglona ruling scaled back the excessive firearms taxes that could be used to deter an individual from owning a gun which, by this ruling, was officially unconstitutional.
All of the 11 examples in this infographic prove that the Second Amendment is here to stay. Despite years of trying, it isn’t something that can be broken or cheated but continues to hold strong as one of our basic rights against both direct and indirect attacks alike. The history of the amendment is strong and it’s managed to thrive through criticism over the years and will continue to do so.
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Source: Minutemanreview