En fait je dois faire un exposé en anglais sur le second amendment... donc j'ai fais mes recherches et j'ai retranscrit en anglais mais bon je suis pas bilingue...du tout! alors j'aimerais bien que quelqu'un me corrige.Merci d'avance (dsl c'est assez long)
The 20 of september, 2004 marks the end of the « Assault Weapon Ban » in USA, which forbade the selling of semi-automatic weapons to civilian people.
This law have been adopted in 1984 by Bill Clinton in response to the numerous slaughters which happen ago, implying rather military than civilian weapons. It limited bullet capacity in shops and so weapons like UZI and AK47.
However the lifetime of this law was limited to ten years. The American assembly, mainly republican had to renew that law and George W. Bush had promised that he would veto if necessary, but nothing has been done. If he had kept his promise, Bush would have irritated the defendants of the Second Amendment of USA’s Constitution, so to speak the members of NRA, and largely those of his party, the same people who is generous donor during the election campaigns. So they have had more influence than the two-third of American population, about this restriction. Anyway, for the last ten years, the weapons manufacturers have all the same reached to market deadly weapons legally.
Nowadays, the Second Amendment of USA’s constitution seems to guarantee to any American citizen the right to own and to carry weapons.
In spite of everything, did the authors of that constitution want to put this right on the same level as the freedom of speech or faith?
The USA’s has been admired by Europe, as early as his adoption in 1791, because of his avant-garde ideas, and it was seen as a model of democracy for the rest of the world. Yet, there are many debates, dealing with interpretation of the Bill of Rights, in particular about the Second Amendment.
The multiple slaughters caused by teenagers in schools (school-shooting) the breathtaking rise of deaths by bullet (more than 11.000) have transported the debate at the height of the American society
Two groups are diametrically opposed in this debate: those who refuse any legislation which would infringe the right to own a weapon and those which believe that the safety of American people is possible only with a reinforced control of the broadcasting of weapons with fire in the states.
They clash about the intentions of the framers when they enacted that “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.”
We can make two readings of that statement: either each person sees himself granted the absolute right to hold a weapon, or either this amendment grants only one collective right for each state to create an armed militia in order to protect itself from invasions.
I think that the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment is intrinsically linked with the historical events which prevailed at the moment of its adoption and that the Framers didn’t have any intention to create an absolute right for everyone to own a weapon.
The burning defenders of the right for all to carry and hold a weapon, included the NRA, a powerful American lobby, affirm that the Second Amendment has nothing to do with weapons possession in order to hunt or practise the shooting but rather that it is linked with the notion of freedom and “protection from tyranny” of the government. They mainly support their thesis on the England History of weapons.
The talk of the 2nd Amendment let people think that the right to create a militia is protected for the states, that is to say that it is themselves which set up a militia. Moreover, “militia” doesn’t mean groups of person spontaneously setted up like in today’s several American states, and of course has nothing to compare with extremist groups.
The protection granted to the states have to be considered like a collective right, not like an individual right. On the contrary, the partisans of carrying of weapons maintain that this right have to be enforced in a individual way, like freedom of speak or freedom of religion, or else freedom of press.
The judicial debate concerning the 2nd Amendment has started only since the twentieth century. In United States vs. Miller in 1939, the High Court of USA maintained unanimously that the 2nd Amendment serves only to protect the right of a state to manage his own militia, and doesn’t grant any guarantee to an individual to own a weapon.
Yet, recently, in a decision about that question, the Federal Court of USA claimed that the right conferred by the 2nd Amendment is an individual right. I quote: “ We find that history of the 2nd Amendment reinforces the plain meaning of its text, namely that it protects individual Americans in their right to keep and bear arms whether or not they are a member of a select militia or performing active military service or training”. It seems that the debate concerning the 2nd Amendment isn’t closed.
The different thesis, and different readings made about the historical context surrounding the adoption of the 2nd Amendment don’t succeed in agreeing.
In American’s imaginary, fire weapons are built-in history and popular culture. It is thanks to weapons that they have obtained their independence, that’s with weapons that Secession War has taken place and that the West Conquest has been carried out. Woe to the ones who would try to demonstrate that the image of the man carrying his gun on his shoulder is a myth. (Story of Michael Bellesiles: In his book, “Arming America: the origin of a national gun culture”, he assured that not many people owned weapons at the time of the Constitution editing. His book received the Bancroft Prize for American History, granted by Columbia’s University. One year after, the prize has been removed , because M. Bellesiles would have based his text in wrong searches. That is the defenders of 2nd Amendment who had examined closely the archives invoked by Bellesiles, and have discovered the fraud.)
Even if the thesis which affirms that the original intention of the framers was to grant to the states a protection against the central government is inseparable from the historical context of revolution, we can notice difficulties due to the analysis work of a text which represents the very foundation of American society. Likewise the text was written 200 years ago, and today the society is completely different from the one that we could see at this period.
The defenders of a constitution “paralysed in the time” and those who want a reading more modern of the founder text confront themselves. It is the classical duel between conservative and liberal worths. Which remains sure, it is that the debate is far to be sorted out.
The groups which advocate a more important control of weapons possession face up to powerful lobbies of weapons manufacturers. Those lasts find their support not only as regards politic, but also through the most prestigious American universities, and within the artistic community.
The image which symbolizes the most faithfully that the wrench between, two Americas is the one of Charlton Heston, who was president of NRA, raising a gun dated from revolutionary period and saying: “I’ll give up my gun when you take it from a cold, dead hands!”
