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3 J. on Firearms & Pub. Pol'y 57 (1990)
Gun Control Jeopardizes All Our Constitutional Rights

handle is hein.journals/jfpp3 and id is 61 raw text is: GUN CONTROL JEOPARDIZES ALL OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS David 1. Caplan, Ph.D., J.D. Reprinted by permission of The American Rifleman. Revised by the author. Today grave dangers threaten the individual rights of the people. Their rights are menaced from many directions. The most fierce assault is the erosion of rights by legal processes, a proce- dure most dangerous because it is so effective. Those who don't own guns, as well as those who do, have become alarmed by the realization that an erosion of the individual right to have arms under the Second Amendment spells dire peril for our other constitutional rights. Their fears are well-founded by virtue of existing legal principles and historical precedents. One of the favorite arguments disparaging the Second Amendment is that the right of the people to keep and bear arms is merely a collective right referring only tothe people collectively as a common body. In the consideration of the proposal for inclusion of the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights, the U.S. Senate in 1789 soundly rejected a motion on the floor to add the restrictive words for the common defense after the words to keep and bear arms. (As the British Parliament earlier had rejected an identical attempt to restrict the right to have arms in the English Bill of Rights of 1689.) Moreover, those who think that the right of the people to keep and bear arms refers only to a collective right confront a serious threshold problem in their interpretation of the First and Fourth Amendments in our Bill of Rights: Amendment 1: ...the right of the people to assemble peaceably and petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Amendment IV: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated....

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