Page 3 - The Second Amendment News Today

A series of slave revolts terrified white residents and helped fuel the rationale for gun ownership ‘For too long, the second amendment has been portrayed with a founding fathers aura swaddled in the stars and stripes.’ Photograph: Eric Gay/AP Bodies are piling up all over the second amendment as two of America’s pandemics converge. The “plague of gun violence” and the inability to mount an effective response, even in the wake of multiple mass shootings, is, un...

Shall not be infringed. it is a topic of the book "the second amendment." written by my next guest michael waldman. michael, how much deliberation went into the 27 words? >> they are foggy and confusing. a lot of debate over the constitution. the second amendment was not the marquee item these were debating. they were talking about these in the constitutional convention. it is clear that what the framers were thinking about overwhelmingly were the militias. the militias were the state military f...

Showing california shooter had bought guns. even though california has a database in this instance, deputies did not check the database. the clock winds down to violence by a ticking time bomb and we are incapable of stopping him. the california assembly member is proposing a way to get guns out of the hands an of the mentally unstable when family and friends fear this is is eminent. we have author of the book, "my life among the serial killers" and has interviewed dozens of serial killers. hele...

Those limits were. were fighting that out in the courts and dozens and dozens of judges have ruled and overwhelmingly, interestingly they upheld gun laws. yeah, its an individual right but society still has a right to protect itself and there could be limits but were continuing to fight it out. this is one of the great debates throughout our time. >> if i go to the nra headquarters and i walk in the door, what am i going to see missing from the second amendment? >> well, an amazing thing. you go...

It does speak to an urban rural divide. right now, anytime gun safety measures are discussed, some people say my second amendment rights, my constitutional sacred right is threatened. and actually a lot of other people feel -- we have been fighting over what it means always. >> you can still support it and own a gun. people dont understand that. >> you can support it and also own a gun and law abiding people should be able to protect themselves on the one hand, on the other hand, have strong gun...

Couldnt do until 2008. the supreme court never ruled that way until 2008. >> and a big part of changing the way that society and the way the courts view the second amendment was the nra. >> the nra has been foreign a-lo around for a long time since the civil war. we think of it as speaking for hunters, but in 1977, there was a backlash to the 1960s that happened in many, many kinds of organizations. and there was what they called a revolt at cincinnati, annual meeting of the nra, a thousand acti...

Absolute right for private citizens to have guns pro protect themselves is not what the founders intended. >> it is striking when you look at the debate that produced the second amendment, the real one, not the one in our imagination. the original debate was about the militias. and the reason the -- they put it in, the constitution, was to protect the 13 state militias that were actually made up of citizen soldiers. not like what we have now. not like the national guard. all men and eventually a...

Authorized new funding for background checks, a small step, but still a step forward in the eyes of gun control advocates. theyre arguing for tougher reforms. some argue the status quo is what the founding fathers wanted. but was it? thats in a fascinating new book "the second amendment" a biography by michael walidman, the bredden center for justice. the founders considered expanding gun rights. the federalists completely and totally dominated the congress in 1789. they were not interested in c...

Had religious scruples about bearing arms, you didnt have to do your military service in person. 12 people spoke on the floor of the house and all about who would be in the militias and how they would decide who would serve. whats interesting is, first of all, right after it enacted the second amendment, that militia system where you had an individual right but for the duty to serve crumbled. the country changed. people stopped showing up for the militia duty. and over the decades, of course the...