What are the pro's and con's of the Second Amendment?

Answer 1

It somewhat stands in the way of some people's ideas that the US could be made safe by an effort to take away guns from everyone except police and the military. That's probably the main con.

On the pro side, it is designed to prevent tyranny. Its role in preventing or increasing crime is so hotly debated that most people lose sight of the fact that ordinary crime had nothing to do with the reason it was passed. There are even people now who think the Second Amendment was related to hunting. For what it's worth, it has played a role in helping potential victims of crime arm themselves to deter or defend against criminals and, of course, hunters, marksmen, gun collectors and gun manufacturers tend to like it as well. There is substantial evidence that when Florida and other states passed laws making it much easier for people with no criminal record to legally carry concealed weapons and then issued over 100,000 concealed carry permits, that many categories of violent crime dropped. Though this was a boost for the anti-crime arguments in favor of the Second Amendment, the fact remains that crime was not reason the Second Amendment was passed.

The main reason it was passed was to prevent Tyranny. The idea was that the United States should rely for defense upon an armed militia consisting of all able-bodied men in the US. (Women were not expected to fight in the 18th century when the 2nd Amendment was passed.)

One reason for wanting to use the militia system was that calling a large portion of the population into military service to repel an invasion would allow the rapid formation of a huge military force when it was needed. But this was not the reason that it was put into the constitution as the 2nd Amendment. It was put into the constitution to prevent the replacement of the militia system by a "standing army" which could be more easily used to suppress political dissent and defend tyrants against insurrection by the people.

The current constitution was not the one implemented at the time of the American Revolution. That was the Articles of Confederation, which were being drawn up in June of 1776, shortly before the Declaration of Independence was passed by the Second Continental Congress. The Articles of Confederation weren't fully ratified until 1781, two years before the Treaty of Paris ended the War of the American Revolution.

The US Constitution that is nominally in effect today was proposed in 1787 and adopted by twelve states by 1789 and by Rhode Island in 1790. By that time, the American Revolution had been over for seven years. A number of states feared that the new constitution would give the central government too much power. This fear was increased by the fact that leaders of the Federalist Party had such a strong role in drafting it and they were well known for favoring more power for the central government. Their opponents, sometimes called "Anti-Federalists", "Republicans", "Democrats" or "Democratic Republicans" (Their party later became the Democratic Party) were known in those days for opposing greater power in the hands of the central government.

Partly due to fears that the new US Constitution would not be ratified by the states, ten amendments were introduced by James Madison in 1789. These ten amendments are known as the Bill of Rights and the Second Amendment was number two on the list. All ten of these amendments were clearly designed to limit the power of the federal government. Today, some people would like to believe that the second amendment was somehow different and was designed to give the federal government the power to have an army. The US Constitution itself already authorized the federal government to have a military, in Article 1 and Article 2, but clearly envisioned a militia-type system such as the US had used in the War of the American Revolution and still had at the time the US Constitution was drafted and ratified.

The main purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to prevent the militia from being replaced by a "standing army", meaning a professional army that might have more loyalty to the government than to the people and could be used to oppress the people as the previous (British) government's army had done before and during the War of the American Revolution.

There are plenty of historical examples of countries that remained relatively free so long as they were defended by such a militia and plenty of examples of tyrannies where the power of the tyrants depended upon a specialized armed force loyal to the tyrant. Even Niccolo Machiavelli, the 16th century political writer notorious for writing about the harsh realities of politics wrote that a militia, such as had defended the Florentine Republic, was the best defense against tyranny. The theory is that the people aren't going to oppress themselves, so an army made up of basically the whole population capable of bearing arms is a lot less likely to support a tyranny than a smaller force of professional soldiers who make their career in the army and are financially dependent upon the government.

Of course, the US now has a large standing army and has almost abandoned the old militia type system. This occurred mostly during the 20th century. I suppose another con of the Second Amendment is that it failed to prevent this as it was intended.

Answer 2

The original intention of the Second Amendment was that it would allow civilians to be have the ability to protect themselves from the federal government, should that government become tyrannical. Another justification is that it allows civilians to defend themselves from attack by an armed criminal.