The Second Amendment Is Not a ‘States’ Rights’ Issue, Governor Perry

(American Thinker) In the wake of a recent deadly shooting near Texas A&M University, anti-gun advocates have yet again taken the opportunity to position a horrific event as a momentous signal to introduce stricter gun control laws.Governor Rick Perry quickly responded by laying out his defense of gun rights.  “When it gets back to this issue of taking guns away from law-abiding citizens, and somehow know that’s going to make the country safer, it’s just that I don’t agree with that,” he told Fox News.  “I think most people in Texas certainly don’t agree with that, and that is a state-by-state issue, frankly, that should be decided in the states and not again a rush to Washington, D.C., to centralize the decision-making.”  And a majority of Texans, he offers, “believe that law-abiding citizens should be able to have their weapons.”

I would certainly agree about the majority of Texans’ firm belief in the right to keep and bear arms.  But as to his claim that the right for law-abiding citizens to “have their weapons” is a “state-by-state issue,” my question would have to be: since when?

The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads:  “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.”  Thus, the right to bear arms is a fundamental right of all Americans, meant to ensure the maintenance of our security and freedom — not a right that is simply allowed to be granted or denied by individual states.

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