Gun control - Annotated Bibliography Example

Gun Control: Annotated Bibliography Details: al Affiliation: Gun Control: Annotated Bibliography Chemerinsky, E. (2004). Putting the gun control debate in social perspective. Fordham Law Review, 73, 477-485. Immersing himself into the gun violence debate that is now a concern for every American, Erwin Chemerinsky begins his article questioning whether the Second Amendment would remain if America was to have a new constitution in the future. He is quick to follow his question with a probable answer: that “The reality of course, is that conservatives will favor the amendment while liberals will vehemently be opposed to it.

” Such a situation has been a part of life in the United States for quite a long time with very little space for stronger regulations for public safety over guns; and the core of the debate is but the very Second Amendment, which has reduced the public response to the gun-aided carnage to mere outrage. The author notes with some sense of certainty that though defeated in the past, attempts at gun control legislations is not over, and will soon raise its head yet again and again. He singles out the “defense” aspect of the Second Amendment noting that the law has always recognized the right to one’s security, liberty, and private property, and it is from these fundamental rights that necessitate the right to bear arms just in case “the sanctions of society and/or laws are insufficient to restrain oppressive violence.

” It is on this account that laws that infringe on the right to self-defense have and will fail the constitutionality test, hence the Heller setting a dark cloud over gun control laws enacted [and to be] in the United States. Like other academics and law experts, Chemerinsky concludes that the debate over the Second Amendment is far from over, but will never get resolved. His opening comment that “guns have become an important symbol of freedom to a majority of American public” is but a perfect description of the American public over guns, and that it is harder to envisage any side of the debate giving room for opposing arguments.

This article, without a doubt, makes a fundamental contribution to the gun debate, more particularly with regards to navigating the muddy arguments that threaten to overrun public safety as evident by the incidences of gun violence witnessed so far.Desmond, C. (2008). From cities to schoolyards: The implications of an individual right to bear arms on the constitutionality of Gun-Free Zones. McGeorge Law Review, 39, 1043-1072. By no surprise, Desmond Cameron, like many other scholars begins his narrative with the Virginia Tech gun tragedy, terming it the “deadliest” as any other would call it.

Indeed, as he notes, the incident, like no other, has kept the debate on gun control much alive that any other in the history of the United States, with gun control proponents blaming easy access to guns while gun rights advocates calling for even more guns for self-defense right into colleges. Noteworthy in the entire article, no individual protection under the Bill of Rights has ever been subjected to the harsh judicial review applied to the Second Amendment in the history of the United States.

However, while the courts have held that the Second Amendment with regards to Americans right to bear arms, the have all fallen short of articulating a workable standard of review the very same contested right.Notwithstanding the courts affirmation of the second Amendment’s individual right to bear arms, Desmond proposes a political process to resolve America’s gun problem. He backs his argument with the ruling in Emersion, that “Although . . . the Second Amendment does protect individual rights, that does not mean that those rights may never be made subject to any limited, narrowly tailored specific exceptions…” He notes that under a reasonable regulation standard like the one suggested in Emersion, enacted laws would be considered invalid only to the extent that the legislature’s purpose for enacting the law overburdens the right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes.

Should the argument be accepted, Desmond notes that Heller, which declared gun laws unconstitutional, missed an important determination of whether the gun laws were reasonably enacted to protect public safety. Governments the world over are stakeholders in the affairs of the public, and thus have the obligation to guarantee the safety of its citizens. Legislation is one of those options to do it. It is common, to which Desmond concurs, even if not to all, that the presence of a gun creates a “substantive evil” of being violent; for people who kill with guns were once good people holding guns legally.

Freedom of speech, though indisputably fundamental, is subject to reasonable time, place, and manner restrictions; and so was affirmed in Hill. The Second Amendment should not be any different. Kleck, Gary. (2009). Mass shootings in schools: The worst possible case for gun control. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(10), 1447-1464.In this very informative article, Gary Kleck gives a review of the gun control measures proposed in the aftermath of the Columbine shootings among other similar gun incidents and concludes that most were largely irrelevant, and thus could not have prevented and/or reduced the death tolls.

He brings the reader up-to-date with the mass shooting incidents, noting a peculiar similarity: the use of multiple guns, which were either stolen from legal owners, and/or purchased from unlicensed stores, with those obtained through trafficking regarded by most proposals as a less significant source of crime guns. Indeed under the circumstances presented, the murders are well thought-out for days or weeks that short sighted delays in acquisition and/or gun-locking are but irrelevant, somehow.

Acknowledging the need for gun controls, Kleck argues that such controls should be all inclusive. Kleck, however, steers clear of the controversial Second Amendment, which, in effect, is the obstacle to gun legislations; for it is the very law that protects individuals’ rights to bear arms. The article, thus, offers very little in terms of breaking the current deadlock to allow modeling gun controls according to his proposals.