The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States: “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.”
The Second Amendment has been the subject of controversy only for roughly the last 80 years. Even though, as some argue, the Framers themselves argued over its wording, the almost universally accepted opinion was that it guaranteed an individual right.
It was in 1934 that the first attempt at universal gun control on a national level occurred. In 1934, the United States was at the height of the Great Depression (Kangas, 1997). In 1933, the 18th Amendment to the Constitution had finally been repealed, marking the end of the noble experiment known as “prohibition”. The fourteen years of prohibition had nurtured an atmosphere of speakeasies, bootlegging, gangsters, and mafia. The year following the repeal of prohibition was marred by some of the worst gangster violence in American history. John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson were on the run. Bonnie and Clyde were killed in that year (1934 in the United States, 2013). The nation had just finished its war with Al Capone’s gang (Al Capone, 2013). The people were tired of the unrestrained violence and, in an apparent classic effort to obtain safety at the expense of liberty, were willing to accept limits on the right to bear arms.
Although this discussion is not about the history of gun control but about the right to bear arms, it bears mentioning that, in almost all cases in which federal gun control has been enacted, the legislation was enacted following an acute emotional crisis or tragedy that either frightened people or tugged at their heart strings (Garrett).
In 1968, following the assassinations of President Kennedy, Rev. Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy, Congress passed the Gun Control Act of