document_title: Tuileries Palace

question_text: where did the french king live before versailles

text: Tuileries Palace

text: History[edit]

text: After the accidental death of Henry II of France in 1559, his widow Catherine de' Medici (1519–1589) planned a new palace. She sold the medieval Hôtel des Tournelles, where her husband had died, and began building the palace of Tuileries in 1564, using architect Philibert de l'Orme. The name derives from the tile kilns or tuileries which had previously occupied the site. The palace was formed by a range of long, narrow buildings. During the reign of Henry IV (1589–1610), the building was enlarged to the south, so it joined the long riverside gallery, the Grande Galerie, which ran all the way to the older Louvre Palace in the east.

text: Louis XIV[edit]

text: During the reign of Louis XIV major changes were made to the Tuileries Palace. From 1659 to 1661 it was extended to the north by the addition of the Théâtre des Tuileries.[1] From 1664 to 1666 the architect Louis Le Vau and his assistant François d'Orbay made other significant changes. They transformed Philibert de l'Orme's facades and central pavilion, replacing its grand central staircase with a colonnaded vestibule on the ground floor and the Salle des Cents Suisses (Hall of the Hundred Swiss Guards) on the floor above and adding a rectangular dome. A new grand staircase was installed in the entrance of the north wing of the palace, and lavishly decorated royal apartments were constructed in the south wing. The king's rooms were on the ground floor, facing toward the Louvre, and the queen's on the floor above, overlooking the garden. At the same time, Louis' gardener, André Le Nôtre, redesigned the Tuileries gardens. The Court moved into the Tuileries Palace in November 1667, but left in 1672, and soon thereafter went to the Palace of Versailles.[2] The Tuileries Palace was virtually abandoned and used only as a theatre, but its gardens became a fashionable resort of Parisians.

text: Louis XV[edit]

text: The boy-king Louis XV was moved from Versailles to the Tuileries Palace on 1 January 1716, four months after ascending to the throne. He moved back to Versailles on 15 June 1722, three months before his coronation. Both moves were made at the behest of the Regent, the duc d'Orléans. The king also resided at the Tuileries for short periods during the 1740s.[3]

text: Louis XVI[edit]

text: On 6 October 1789, during the French Revolution, Louis XVI and his family were forced to leave Versailles and brought to the Tuileries where they were kept under surveillance. For the next two years the palace remained the official residence of the king.

text: On 9 November 1789, the National Constituent Assembly, formerly the Estates-General of 1789, had moved its deliberations from the tennis court at Versailles to the Tuileries, following the removal of the court to Paris. The Tuileries' covered riding ring, the Salle du Manège (which ran along the north end of the Tuileries Gardens to the west of the palace), home to the royal equestrian academy, provided the largest indoor space in the city.

text: The royal family tried to escape after dark, on 20 June 1791, but were captured at Varennes and brought back to the Tuileries. The following year, on 10 August 1792, the palace was stormed by an armed mob, which overwhelmed and massacred the Swiss Guard as the royal family fled through the gardens and took refuge with the Legislative Assembly. The Paris National Guard defended the King, but the daughter of King Louis XVI claimed that many of the guard were already in favor of the revolution.[4]

text: In November 1792, the Armoire de fer incident took place at the Tuileries palace. This was the discovery of a hiding place at the royal apartments, believed to contain the secret correspondence of Louis XVI with various political figures. The incident created a considerable scandal that served to discredit the King.

text: Revolutionary France[edit]

text: The Tuileries accommodated the Constituent Assembly, its successor, the National Convention, and, in 1795, the Council of Five Hundred (Conseil des Cinq-Cents) of the Directoire until the body moved to the Palais-Bourbon in 1798. In 1799, the Jacobin Club du Manège had its headquarters there. The Committee of Public Safety met in the Pavillon de Flore. A courtier of a later era could summon up nightmarish visions of the palace's Salle de Spectacle, or theater, where many Convention sessions were held during the Reign of Terror:

text: At night a single lamp illumined this huge deserted hall, peopled with terrible memories. These I would often muse over as I stopped at the spot once occupied by the chair of the president, where Boissy d'Anglas had saluted the bleeding head of Feraud, and where Thuriot had listened impassively to the outburst of Robespierre at bay: "President of assassins, once more I ask your ear !" I saw in imagination the "Mountain," the "Plain," the "Marsh," and the crowded tribunes; I fancied I could hear the shrieking clamour of the "tricoteuses" and the drums of the "sections" hastening to the attack or to the rescue of the Assembly; and I would call up one or other of the acts of the mighty drama of which this sinister hall has been the scene.

text: Napoleon[edit]

text: When Napoleon Bonaparte came into power in 1799, he made the Tuileries the official residence of the First Consul and, later, the imperial palace. In 1808, Napoleon began constructing the northern gallery which also connected to the Louvre, enclosing a vast square (place).

text: As Napoleon I's chief residence, the Tuileries Palace was redecorated in the Neoclassical Empire style by Percier and Fontaine and some of the best known architects, designers, and furniture makers of the day.

text: In 1809, Jacob-Desmalter, principal supplier of furniture to the Emperor, began work on a jewel cabinet designed for the Empress Joséphine's great bedroom in the Tuileries (and soon to be used by Marie-Louise). Designed by the architect Charles Percier, this impressive piece of furniture was embellished with several gilt-bronze ornaments: the central panel depicts the "Birth of the Queen of the Earth to whom Cupids and Goddesses hasten with their Offerings" by the bronzier Pierre-Philippe Thomire, after a bas-relief by Chaudet. Jacob-Desmalter completed the "great jewelry box" in 1812, with two smaller items of furniture in the same style but using woods from rainforests in China.

text: After Napoléon's divorce, Pierre Paul Prud'hon was commissioned to design the apartments of his new wife, Marie-Louise. For the bridal suite of the new Empress he designed all the furniture and interior decorations in a Greek Revival style.

text: Restoration[edit]

text: The Tuileries Palace became the royal residence at the time of the Bourbon Restoration from 1814 to 1830. During the July Revolution of 1830, the palace was attacked for a third time by an armed mob and occupied. The Swiss Guards stationed at the palace, aware of what had happened in 1792 to their predecessors, abandoned the palace. King Louis Philippe I took up permanent residence there until 1848, when it was again invaded on 24 February.

text: After the coup d'état by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in 1852, the Tuileries Palace served as the official residence of the executive branch of government, and when President Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte became Emperor Napoléon III, he moved from his office at the Élysée Palace to the Tuileries.

text: The Second Empire[edit]

text: During the Second Empire, the Tuileries was extensively refurbished and redecorated after the looting and damage that occurred during the Revolution of 1848. Some imposing state rooms were designed and richly decorated, serving as the center stage of the ceremonies and pageantry of the Second Empire, such as on the occasion of Queen Victoria's state visit to France in 1855. The Second Empire also completed the northern wing of the Louvre along the rue de Rivoli, linking the Tuileries Palace with the rest of the Louvre, and thus finally achieving the huge complex of the Louvre-Tuileries, whose master plan had been envisioned three centuries earlier. Previously, the Place du Carrousel had been swept clear of the old houses that had encroached on it.

text: The prominent roof-lines of the palace and especially its squared central dome were influential prototypes in the Second Empire style adopted for hotels and commercial buildings as well as residences in the United Kingdom and North America.

text: Interior[edit]

text: The private apartment used by Napoleon III, on the ground floor of the southern wing of the palace, consisted of "overheated gilt boxes furnished in the style of the First Empire", being kept at "an excessively high temperature" by the emperor. Empress Eugénie had her apartment above, connected to the emperor's by a winding staircase, with a mezzanine occupied by the treasurer of the privy purse in between, and comprising eight of the eleven rooms on the bel etage of the southern wing's garden side. This arrangement at the Tuileries was unlike at Versailles, where the apartments of monarch and consort were both on the same floor and the king's was the grander of the two. [7]

text: The state rooms – on the Carrousel, or east, side – of the south wing were used variously depending on the occasion. If it were an informal dinner, the household would gather in the Private Drawing Room, or Salon d'Apollon, which was separated from the Salle de Maréchaux, in the central pavilion, by the First Consul's Room, or Salon Blanc. The party would proceed through the throne room to dinner in the Salon Louis XIV. However, gala dinners were held in the larger Galerie de Diane, the southernmost of the state apartments. If it were a state ball, then refreshments would be set up in the Galerie; and the procession of the imperial party would be from there to the Salle de Maréchaux, which occupied the space of two entire floors of the central Pavillon de L'Horloge and served as the ballroom. [7]

text: The little-used northern wing of the palace, which contained the chapel, Galerie de la Paix, and the Salle de Spectacle would be called into service only for performances, such as the Auber cantata performed the evening of Napoleon and Eugénie's civil wedding ceremony, 29 July 1853, [8] or for the most important fêtes, such as the party given for sovereigns attending the International Exposition, on 10 June 1867. The Salle de Spectacle was also used as a hospital during the Franco-Prussian War. [5]

text: The southernmost pavilion, the Pavillon de Flore, served as the backstairs to the palace. Service corridors led to it. One could get from there to the sprawling basement, lit with innumerable gas lamps, where a railway had been set up to bring food from the kitchens under the Rue de Rivoli. [9]

text: Destruction of the Tuileries[edit]

text: The finalization of the long planned Louvre-Tuileries complex was not to happen. On 23 May 1871, during the suppression of the Paris Commune, 12 men under the orders of Jules Bergeret, the former chief military commander of the Commune, set the Tuileries on fire at 7 p.m., using petroleum, liquid tar and turpentine. The fire lasted 48 hours and thoroughly gutted the palace, except for the southernmost part, the Pavillon de Flore[10] (the gate of honor, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, also remains, as well as the foundation[11]). The dome itself was blown up by explosives placed in the central pavilion and detonated by the converging fires. Observing this, Bergeret sent a note to the Committee of Public Safety: 'The last vestiges of Royalty have just disappeared. I wish that the same may befall all the public buildings of Paris'[12] It was only on 25 May that the Paris fire brigades and the 26th battalion of the Chasseurs d'Afrique managed to put out the fire. The library and other portions of the Louvre were also set on fire by Communards and entirely destroyed. The museum itself was only miraculously saved.

text: The ruins of the Tuileries stood on the site for 11 years. Although the roofs and the inside of the palace had been utterly destroyed by the fire, the stone shell of the palace remained intact and restoration was possible. Other monuments of Paris also set on fire by Communards, such as the City Hall, were rebuilt in the 1870s. After much hesitation, the Third Republic eventually decided not to restore the ruins of the Tuileries, which had become a symbol of the former royal and imperial regimes. However, the portions of the Louvre that had also been destroyed by fire were rebuilt in their original style.

text: Demolition[edit]

text: In 1882, the French National Assembly voted for the demolition of the ruins, which were sold to a private entrepreneur for the sum of 33,300 gold francs (approximately US$130,000 in 2005[citation needed]), despite the protests of Baron Haussmann and other members of French artistic and architectural circles, who opposed what they thought was a crime against French arts and history. The demolition was started in February 1883 and completed on 30 September 1883. Bits of stone and marble from the palace were sold by a private entrepreneur, Achille Picart, as souvenirs, and even to build a castle in Corsica, near Ajaccio, the Château de la Punta (fr),[13] which is essentially a reconstruction of the Pavillon de Bullant. The courtyard pediment of the central pavilion can be seen in Paris' Georges Cain square (fr), some courtyard is in the garden of the Trocadero. Other pieces are in the Louvre, the Museum of Decorative Arts, and at schools of architecture, fine arts, and bridges and roads.[14]

text: Tuileries Garden and the Axe historique[edit]

text: When the large empty space between the northern and southern wings of the Louvre now familiar to modern visitors was revealed in 1883, for the first time the Louvre courtyard opened into an unbroken Axe historique. The Tuileries Garden (French: Jardin des Tuileries) is surrounded by the Louvre (to the east), the Seine (to the south), the Place de la Concorde (to the west) and the Rue de Rivoli (to the north).

text: The straight line which runs through the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe to La Défense was originally centred on the façade of the Tuileries, a similar line leading across the entrance court of the Louvre. As the two façades were placed at slightly differing angles, this has resulted in a slight 'kink' on the site of the palace a feature ultimately dictated by the curved course of the River Seine.

text: Tuileries Garden[edit]

text: The Tuileries Garden covers about 63 acres (25 hectares) and still closely follows a design laid out by the royal landscape architect André Le Nôtre in 1664. His spacious formal garden plan drew out the perspective from the reflecting pools one to the other in an unbroken vista along a central axis from the west façade, which has been extended as the Axe historique.

text: The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume is a museum of contemporary art located in the northwest corner of the gardens.

text: Rebuilding the Tuileries Palace[edit]

text: Since 2003, the Comité national pour la reconstruction des Tuileries[15][16] has been proposing to rebuild the Tuileries Palace. This effort is similar to the proposal of reconstruction of the Berliner Stadtschloss (Berlin City Palace). There are several reasons for rebuilding the Palace of the Tuileries. Ever since the destruction of 1883, the famous perspective of the Champs-Élysées, which ended on the majestic façade of the Tuileries Palace, now ends at the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, formerly centered on the Tuileries but now occupying a large empty space. The Louvre, with its pyramid on the one hand, and the Axe historique of the Place de la Concorde-Champs-Élysées-Arc de Triomphe on the other, are not aligned on the same axis.

text: The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel fortuitously stands near the intersection of the two axes. The Palace of the Tuileries, which was located at the junction of these two diverging axes, helped to disguise this bending of the axes. Architects argue that the rebuilding of the Tuileries would allow the re-establishment of the harmony of these two different axes. The Tuileries Gardens would also recover their purpose, which was to be a palace garden.

text: Also, it is emphasized that the Musée du Louvre needs to expand its ground plan to properly display all its collections, and if the Tuileries Palace were rebuilt the Louvre could expand into the rebuilt palace. It's also proposed to rebuild the state apartments of the Second Empire as they stood in 1871. All the plans of the palace and many photographs are stored at the Archives nationales. Furthermore, all the furniture and paintings from the palace survived the 1871 fire because they had been removed in 1870 at the start of the Franco-Prussian War and stored in secure locations.

text: Today, the furniture and paintings are still deposited in storehouses and are not on public display due to the lack of space in the Louvre. It is argued that recreating the state apartments of the Tuileries would allow the display of these treasures of the Second Empire style which are currently hidden.

text: Cost[edit]

text: In 2006 a rebuilding of the Palace of the Tuileries was estimated to cost 300 million euros (US$380 million). The plan was to finance the project by public subscription with the work being undertaken by a private foundation, with the French government spending no money on the project. The French president at that time, Jacques Chirac, called for a debate on the subject. Former president Charles de Gaulle had also supported reconstruction, saying that it would "make a jewel of the centre of Paris."[11]

text: Gallery[edit]

text:
The vast complex formed by the Tuileries Palace and the Louvre Palace.

State rooms of the Tuileries Palace before 1871 - Salon Louis XIV

Great staircase

Tuileries Palace before 1871 - View from the Tuileries Gardens

Princess Marie of Orléans in her studio in the Tuileries Palace (by Prosper Lafaye (fr), c. 1842)

Stool from the former Palais des Tuileries by François-Honoré-Georges Jacob-Desmalter, Paris around 1810


document_title: Book of Job

question_text: when was the book of job written in the bible

root

text: Book of Job

text: Structure[edit]

text: The Book of Job consists of a prose prologue and epilogue narrative framing poetic dialogues and monologues.[5] It is common to view the narrative frame as the original core of the book, enlarged later by the poetic dialogues and discourses, and sections of the book such as the Elihu speeches and the wisdom poem of chapter 28 as late insertions, but recent trends have tended to concentrate on the book's underlying editorial unity.[6]

tag: p

text: 1. Prologue in two scenes, the first on earth, the second in heaven (Job 1–2)

text: 2. Job's opening monologue (Job 3 – seen by some scholars as a bridge between the prologue and the dialogues and by others as the beginning of the dialogues),[7] and three cycles of dialogues between Job and his three friends (Job chapters – the third cycle is not complete, the expected speech of Zophar being replaced by the wisdom poem of chapter 28)[8]

text: First cycle

tag: ul

text: Second cycle

text: Third cycle

text: 3. Three monologues:

text:
A Poem to Wisdom (chapter 28, previously read as part of the speech of Job, now regarded by most scholars as a separate interlude in the narrator's voice)[7]
Job's closing monologue (chapters 29–31)
and Elihu's speeches (chapters 32–37)

text: 4. Two speeches by God (chapters 38:1–40:2 and 40:6–41:34, 42:7–8), with Job's responses

text: 5. Epilogue – Job's restoration (chapters 42:9–17).

text: Contents[edit]

text: Prologue on earth and in heaven[edit]

text: The prologue on earth shows the righteous Job blessed with wealth and sons and daughters. The scene shifts to heaven, where God asks Satan (ha-satan, literally "the accuser") for his opinion of Job's piety. Satan answers that Job is pious only because God has blessed him; if God were to take away everything that Job had, then he would surely curse God. God gives Satan permission to take Job's wealth and kill all of his children and servants,[9] but Job nonetheless praises God: "Naked I came out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return: the Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." God allows Satan to afflict his body with boils. Job sits in ashes, and his wife prompts him to "curse God, and die," but Job answers: "Shall we receive good from God and shall we not receive evil?"

text: Job's opening monologue and dialogues between Job and his three friends[edit]

text: Job laments the day of his birth; he would like to die, but even that is denied to him. His three friends Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite, console him. The friends do not waver in their belief that Job's suffering is a punishment for sin, for God causes no one to suffer innocently, and they advise him to repent and seek God's mercy. Job responds with scorn: a just God would not treat him so harshly, patience in suffering is impossible, and the Creator should not take his creatures so lightly, to come against them with such force.[10]

text: Three monologues: Poem to Wisdom, Job's closing monologue, and Elihu's speeches[edit]

text: The dialogues of Job and his friends are followed by a poem (the "hymn to wisdom") on the inaccessibility of wisdom: "Where is wisdom to be found?" it asks, and concludes that it has been hidden from man (chapter 28).[11] Job contrasts his previous fortune with his present plight, an outcast, mocked and in pain. He protests his innocence, lists the principles he has lived by, and demands that God answer him.[12] Elihu (a character not previously mentioned) intervenes to state that wisdom comes from God, who reveals it through dreams and visions to those who will then declare their knowledge.[11]

text: Two speeches by God[edit]

text: God speaks from a whirlwind. His speeches neither explain Job's suffering, nor defend divine justice, nor enter into the courtroom confrontation that Job has demanded, nor respond to his oath of innocence.[13] Instead they contrast Job's weakness with divine wisdom and omnipotence: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?" Job makes a brief response, but God's monologue resumes, never addressing Job directly.[14] In 42:1–6 Job makes his final response, confessing God's power and his own lack of knowledge "of things beyond me which I did not know". Previously he has only heard, but now his eyes have seen God, and "therefore I retract/ And repent in dust and ashes."[15]

text: Epilogue[edit]

text: God tells Eliphaz that he and his three friends "have not spoken of me what is right as my servant Job has done". The three (Elihu, the fourth friend introduced in chapter 32 is not mentioned here) are told to make a burnt offering with Job as their intercessor, "for only to him will I show favour". Job is restored to health, riches and family, and lives to see his children to the fourth generation.[16]

text: Composition[edit]

text: Authorship, language, texts[edit]

text: Rabbinic tradition ascribes the authorship of Job to Moses, but scholars generally agree that it was written between the 7th and 4th centuries BCE, with the 6th century BCE as the most likely period for various reasons.[17] The anonymous author was almost certainly an Israelite, although he has set his story outside Israel, in southern Edom or northern Arabia, and makes allusion to places as far apart as Mesopotamia and Egypt.[18] According to the 6th-century BCE prophet Ezekiel, Job was a man of antiquity renowned for his righteousness,[19] and the book's author has chosen this legendary hero for his parable.[20]

text: The language of Job stands out for its conservative spelling and for its exceptionally large number of words and forms not found elsewhere in the Bible.[21] The 12th century Jewish scholar Ibn Ezra concluded that the book must have been written in some other language and translated into Hebrew, and many later scholars down to the 20th century looked for an Aramaic, Arabic or Edomite original, but a close analysis suggests that the foreign words and foreign-looking forms are literary affectations designed to lend authenticity to the book's distant setting.[22]

text: Job exists in a number of forms: the Hebrew Masoretic Text, which underlies many modern Bible translations; the Greek Septuagint made in Egypt in the last centuries BCE; and Aramaic and Hebrew manuscripts found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.[23]

text: Job and the wisdom tradition[edit]

text: Job, Ecclesiastes and the Book of Proverbs belong to the genre of wisdom literature, sharing a perspective that they themselves call the "way of wisdom".[24] Wisdom means both a way of thinking and a body of knowledge gained through such thinking, as well as the ability to apply it to life. It is attainable in part through human effort and in part as a gift from God, but never in its entirety – except by God.[25] The three books share attitudes and assumptions but differ in their conclusions: Proverbs makes confident statements about the world and its workings that are flatly contradicted by Job and Ecclesiastes.[26] Wisdom literature from Sumeria and Babylonia can be dated to the second millennium BCE.[27] Several texts from ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt offer parallels to Job,[28] and while it is impossible to tell whether the author of Job was influenced by any of them, their existence suggests that he was the recipient of a long tradition of reflection on the existence of inexplicable suffering.[29]

text: Themes[edit]

text: Job is an investigation of the problem of divine justice.[30] This problem, known in theology as theodicy, can be rephrased as a question: "Why do the righteous suffer?"[2] The conventional answer in ancient Israel was that God rewards virtue and punishes sin (the principle known as "retributive justice").[31] This assumes a world in which human choices and actions are morally significant, but experience demonstrates that suffering is frequently unmerited.[32]

text: The biblical concept of righteousness was rooted in the covenant-making God who had ordered creation for communal well-being, and the righteous were those who invested in the community, showing special concern for the poor and needy (see Job's description of his life in chapter 31). Their antithesis were the wicked, who were selfish and greedy.[33] Satan raises the question of whether there is such a thing as disinterested righteousness: if God rewards righteousness with prosperity, will men not act righteously from selfish motives? He asks God to test this by removing the prosperity of Job, the most righteous of all God's servants.[34]

text: The book begins with the frame narrative, giving the reader an omniscient "God's eye perspective" which introduces Job as a man of exemplary faith and piety, "blameless and upright", who "fears God" and "shuns evil".[35][36] God is seen initiating the discussion with Satan and approving Job's suffering, a device which serves three purposes: the usual explanations for suffering, that the sufferer has committed some sin of which he is unaware or that God's actions are inscrutable, are eliminated; it makes clear that it is not Job who is on trial, but God's policy of retribution; and the reader sees that God himself bears responsibility for Job's suffering.[37] The contrast between the frame and the poetic dialogues and monologues, in which Job never learns of the opening scenes in heaven or of the reason for his suffering, creates a sense of contradictory juxtaposition between the divine and human views of Job's suffering.[36][38]

text: In the poetic dialogues Job's friends see his suffering and assume he must be guilty, since God is just. Job, knowing he is innocent, concludes that God must be unjust.[39] He retains his piety throughout the story (belying Satan's suspicion that his righteousness is due to the expectation of reward), but makes clear from his first speech that he agrees with his friends that God should and does reward righteousness.[40] Elihu rejects the arguments of both parties: Job is wrong to accuse God of injustice, as God is greater than human beings, and nor are the friends correct; for suffering, far from being a punishment, may "rescue the afflicted from their affliction" and make them more amenable to revelation – literally, "open their ears" (36:15).[39]

text: Chapter 28, the Hymn to Wisdom, introduces another theme, divine wisdom. The hymn does not place any emphasis on retributive justice, stressing instead the inaccessibility of wisdom.[41] Wisdom cannot be invented or purchased, it says; God alone knows the meaning of the world, and he grants it only to those who live in reverence before him.[42] God possesses wisdom because he grasps the complexities of the world (Job 28:24–26) – a theme which looks forward to God's speech in chapters 38–41 with its repeated refrain "Where were you when...?"[43]

text: When God finally speaks he neither explains the reason for Job's suffering (revealed to the reader in the prologue in heaven) nor defends his justice. The first speech focuses on his role in maintaining order in the universe: the list of things that God does and Job cannot do demonstrates divine wisdom because order is the heart of wisdom. Job then confesses his lack of wisdom, meaning his lack of understanding of the workings of the cosmos and of the ability to maintain it. The second speech concerns God's role in controlling behemoth and leviathan, sometimes translated as the hippopotamus and crocodile, but more probably representing primeval cosmic creatures, in either case demonstrating God's wisdom and power.[44] Job's reply to God's final speech is longer than his first and more complicated. The usual view is that he admits to being wrong to challenge God and now repents "in dust and ashes" (42:6), but the Hebrew is difficult, and an alternative understanding is that Job says he was wrong to repent and mourn and does not retract any of his arguments.[45] In the concluding part of the frame narrative God restores and increases his prosperity, indicating that the divine policy on retributive justice remains unchanged.[46]

text: Later interpretation and influence[edit]

text: History of interpretation[edit]

text: In the Second Temple period (500 BCE – 70 CE) Job began being transformed into something more patient and steadfast, with his suffering a test of virtue and a vindication of righteousness for the glory of God.[47] The process of "sanctifying" Job began with the Greek Septuagint translation (c. 200 BCE) and was furthered in the Testament of Job (1st century BCE – 1st century CE), which makes him the hero of patience.[48] This reading pays little attention to the Job of the dialogue sections of the book,[49] but it was the tradition taken up by the Epistle of James in the New Testament, which presents Job as one whose patience and endurance should be emulated by believers (James 5:7–11).[50]

text: Jewish interpretation of Job was initially positive. He was seen as a righteous Gentile who acknowledged God.[51] Very early, however, Christianity began interpreting Job 19:23–29 (verses concerning a "redeemer" whom Job hopes can save him from God) as a prophecy of Christ,[52] although the major view among scholars is that Job's "redeemer" is either an angelic being or God himself.[53] With Job viewed by Christians as a witness to the coming Christ, the predominant Jewish view became "Job the blasphemer", with some rabbis even saying that he was rightly punished by God because he had stood by while Pharaoh massacred the innocent Jewish infants.[54][55]

text: Saint Augustine recorded that Job had prophesied the coming of Christ, and Gregory the Great offered him as a model of right living worthy of respect. The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides declared his story a parable, and the medieval Christian Thomas Aquinas wrote a detailed commentary declaring it true history. In the Reformation Martin Luther explained how Job's confession of sinfulness and worthlessness underlay his saintliness, and John Calvin's Job demonstrated the doctrine of the resurrection and the ultimate certainty of divine justice.[56]

text: The contemporary movement known as creation theology, an ecological theology valuing the needs of all creation, interprets God's speeches in Job 38–41 to imply that his interests and actions are not exclusively focused on humankind.[57]

text: Liturgical use[edit]

text: Jewish liturgy does not use readings from the Book of Job in the manner of the Pentateuch, Prophets, or Five Megillot, although it is quoted at funerals and times of mourning. However, there are some Jews, particularly the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who do hold public readings of Job on the Tisha B'Av fast (a day of mourning over the destruction of the First and Second Temples and other tragedies). The cantillation signs for the large poetic section in the middle of the Book of Job differ from those of most of the biblical books, using a system shared with it only by Psalms and Proverbs.

text: The Eastern Orthodox Church reads from Job and Exodus during Holy Week. Exodus prepares for the understanding of Christ's exodus to his Father, of his fulfillment of the whole history of salvation; Job, the sufferer, is the Old Testament icon of Christ. The Roman Catholic Church reads from Job during Matins in the first two weeks of September and in the Office of the Dead, and in the revised Liturgy of the Hours Job is read during the Eighth and Ninth Weeks in Ordinary Time.[citation needed]

text: In music, art, literature, and film[edit]

text: The Book of Job has been deeply influential in Western culture, to such an extent that no list could be more than representative. Musical settings from Job include Orlande de Lassus's 1565 cycle of motets, the Sacrae Lectiones Novem ex Propheta Job, and George Frideric Handel's use of Job 19:25 ("I know that my redeemer liveth") as an aria in his 1741 oratorio Messiah. Modern works based on the book include Ralph Vaughan Williams's Job: A Masque for Dancing, French composer Darius Milhaud's Cantata From Job, and Joseph Stein's Broadway interpretation The Fiddler on the Roof, based on an earlier Yiddish memoir by Sholem Alchem in 1894. Neil Simon wrote God's Favorite which is a modern retelling of the Book of Job. Breughel and Georges de la Tour depicted Job visited by his wife, and William Blake produced an entire cycle of illustrations for the book. Writers Job has inspired or influenced include[original research?] John Milton (Samson Agonistes), Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov), Franz Kafka (The Trial), Carl Jung (Answer to Job), Joseph Roth (Job), and Bernard Malamud. Archibald MacLeish's drama, JB, one of the most prominent uses of the Book of Job in modern literature, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1959. Job's influence can also be seen in the Coen brothers' 2009 film, A Serious Man, which was nominated for two Oscars. Terrence Malick's 2011 film The Tree of Life, which won the Palme d'Or, is heavily influenced by the themes of the Book of Job, as the film starts with a quote from the beginning of God's speech to Job. A 2014 Malayalam film called "Iyobinte Pusthakam" tells the story of a man who is losing everything in his life and also has parallels with Dostoevsky's (The Brothers Karamazov). The Russian film Leviathan also draws themes from the Book of Job. The 2015 critically acclaimed novel, The Suffering of Innocents,[58] by Marc Zirogiannis is loosely based on the Book of Job and asks the question, "Why Do the Righteous Suffer?".[59] In 2015 two Ukrainian composers Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko created opera-requiem IYOV. The premiere of the opera was held on 21 September 2015 on the main stage of the international multidisciplinary festival Gogolfest[60]

text: In Islam and Middle Eastern folk tradition[edit]

text: Job (Arabic Ayyub ايوب) is one of the 25 prophets mentioned by name in the Quran, where he is lauded as a steadfast and upright worshiper (Q.38:44). His story has the same basic outline as in the Bible, although the three friends are replaced by his brothers, and his wife stays by his side.[55][61] In Palestinian folklore Job's place of trial is Al-Joura, a village outside the town of Al Majdal (Ashkelon). It was there that God rewarded him with a Fountain of Youth that removed whatever illnesses he had and restored his youth. Al-Joura was a place of annual festivities (four days in all) when people of many faiths gathered and bathed in a natural spring. In Lebanon the Muwahideen (or Druze) community have a shrine built in the Shouf area that allegedly contains Job's tomb. In Turkey, Job is known as Eyüp, and he is supposed to have lived in Şanlıurfa. There is also a tomb of Job outside the city of Salalah in Oman.


document_title: Gun politics in the United States

question_text: which agency is most concerned with second amendment rights

question_tokens: which agency is most concerned with second amendment rights

text: Gun politics in the United States

text: History[edit]

text: The American hunting tradition comes from a time when the United States was an agrarian, subsistence nation where hunting was a profession for some, an auxiliary source of food for some settlers, and also a deterrence to animal predators. A connection between shooting skills and survival among rural American men was in many cases a necessity and a 'rite of passage' for those entering manhood.[1]:9 Today, hunting survives as a central sentimental component of a gun culture as a way to control animal populations across the country, regardless of modern trends away from subsistence hunting and rural living.[7]

text: Prior to the American Revolution there was neither budget nor manpower nor government desire to maintain a full-time army. Therefore, the armed citizen-soldier carried the responsibility. Service in militia, including providing one's own ammunition and weapons, was mandatory for all men. Yet, as early as the 1790s, the mandatory universal militia duty evolved gradually to voluntary militia units and a reliance on a regular army. Throughout the 19th century the institution of the organized civilian militia began to decline.[1]:10 The unorganized civilian militia, however, still remains even in current U.S. law, consisting of essentially everyone from age 17 to 45, while also including former military officers up to age 64, as codified in 10 U.S.C. § 246.

text: Closely related to the militia tradition is the frontier tradition, with the need for self-protection pursuant to westward expansion and the extension of the American frontier.[1]:10–11 Though it has not been a necessary part of daily survival for over a century, "generations of Americans continued to embrace and glorify it as a living inheritance—as a permanent ingredient of this nation's style and culture".[12]:21

text: Colonial era through the Civil War[edit]

text: Most American school children learn about the tyranny of King George III: taxation without representation.[13][14] In the years prior to the American Revolution, the British, in response to the colonists' unhappiness over increasingly direct control and taxation of the colonies, imposed a gunpowder embargo on the colonies in an attempt to lessen the ability of the colonists to resist British encroachments into what the colonies regarded as local matters. Two direct attempts to disarm the colonial militias fanned what had been a smoldering resentment of British interference into the fires of war.[15]

text: These two incidents were the attempt to confiscate the cannon of the Concord and Lexington militias, leading to the Battles of Lexington and Concord of April 19, 1775, and the attempt, on April 20, to confiscate militia powder stores in the armory of Williamsburg, Virginia, which led to the Gunpowder Incident and a face off between Patrick Henry and hundreds of militia members on one side and the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, and British seamen on the other. The Gunpowder Incident was eventually settled by paying the colonists for the powder.[15]

text: According to historian Saul Cornell, states passed some of the first gun control laws, beginning with Kentucky's law to "curb the practice of carrying concealed weapons in 1813." There was opposition and, as a result, the individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment began and grew in direct response to these early gun control laws, in keeping with this new "pervasive spirit of individualism." As noted by Cornell, "Ironically, the first gun control movement helped give birth to the first self-conscious gun rights ideology built around a constitutional right of individual self-defense."[16]:140–141

text: The individual right interpretation of the Second Amendment first arose in Bliss v. Commonwealth (1822),[17] which evaluated the right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state pursuant to Section 28 of the Second Constitution of Kentucky (1799). The right to bear arms in defense of themselves and the state was interpreted as an individual right, for the case of a concealed sword cane. This case has been described as about "a statute prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons [that] was violative of the Second Amendment".[18]

text: The first state court decision relevant to the "right to bear arms" issue was Bliss v. Commonwealth. The Kentucky court held that "the right of citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State must be preserved entire,..."[19]:161[20]

text: Also during the Jacksonian Era, the first collective right (or group right) interpretation of the Second Amendment arose. In State v. Buzzard (1842), the Arkansas high court adopted a militia-based, political right, reading of the right to bear arms under state law, and upheld the 21st section of the second article of the Arkansas Constitution that declared, "that the free white men of this State shall have a right to keep and bear arms for their common defense",[21] while rejecting a challenge to a statute prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons.

text: The Arkansas high court declared "That the words 'a well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free State', and the words 'common defense' clearly show the true intent and meaning of these Constitutions [i.e., Arkansas and U.S.] and prove that it is a political and not an individual right, and, of course, that the State, in her legislative capacity, has the right to regulate and control it: This being the case, then the people, neither individually nor collectively, have the right to keep and bear arms." Joel Prentiss Bishop's influential Commentaries on the Law of Statutory Crimes (1873) took Buzzard's militia-based interpretation, a view that Bishop characterized as the "Arkansas doctrine," as the orthodox view of the right to bear arms in American law.[21][22]

text: The two early state court cases, Bliss and Buzzard, set the fundamental dichotomy in interpreting the Second Amendment, i.e., whether it secured an individual right versus a collective right.[citation needed]

text: This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The specific problem is: it is disjointed, one source is poor quality, the other is poorly used Please help improve this section if you can. (April 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

tag: table

text: Post Civil War[edit]

text: With the Civil War ending, the question of the rights of freed slaves to carry arms and to belong to militia came to the attention of the federal courts. In response to the problems freed slaves faced in the Southern states, the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted.

text: When the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted, Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio used the Court's own phrase "privileges and immunities of citizens" to include the first Eight Amendments of the Bill of Rights under its protection and guard these rights against state legislation.[23]

text: The debate in the Congress on the Fourteenth Amendment after the Civil War also concentrated on what the Southern States were doing to harm the newly freed slaves. One particular concern was the disarming of former slaves.

text: The Second Amendment attracted serious judicial attention with the Reconstruction era case of United States v. Cruikshank which ruled that the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not cause the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, to limit the powers of the State governments, stating that the Second Amendment "has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government."

text: Akhil Reed Amar notes in the Yale Law Journal, the basis of Common Law for the first ten amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which would include the Second Amendment, "following John Randolph Tucker's famous oral argument in the 1887 Chicago anarchist Haymarket Riot case, Spies v. Illinois":

text: Though originally the first ten Amendments were adopted as limitations on Federal power, yet in so far as they secure and recognize fundamental rights—common law rights—of the man, they make them privileges and immunities of the man as citizen of the United States...[24]:1270

text: 20th century[edit]

text: First half of 20th century[edit]

text: Since the late 19th century, with three key cases from the pre-incorporation era, the U.S. Supreme Court consistently ruled that the Second Amendment (and the Bill of Rights) restricted only Congress, and not the States, in the regulation of guns.[25] Scholars predicted that the Court's incorporation of other rights suggested that they may incorporate the Second, should a suitable case come before them.[26]

text: National Firearms Act[edit]

text: The first major federal firearms law passed in the 20th century was the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934. It was passed after Prohibition-era gangsterism peaked with the Saint Valentine's Day massacre of 1929. The era was famous for criminal use of firearms such as the Thompson submachine gun (Tommy gun) and sawed-off shotgun. Under the NFA, machine guns, short-barreled rifles and shotguns, and other weapons fall under the regulation and jurisdiction of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) as described by Title II.[27]

text: United States v. Miller[edit]

text: In United States v. Miller[28] (1939) the Court did not address incorporation, but whether a sawed-off shotgun "has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."[26] In overturning the indictment against Miller, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas stated that the National Firearms Act of 1934, "offend[ed] the inhibition of the Second Amendment to the Constitution." The federal government then appealed directly to the Supreme Court. On appeal the federal government did not object to Miller's release since he had died by then, seeking only to have the trial judge's ruling on the unconstitutionality of the federal law overturned. Under these circumstances, neither Miller nor his attorney appeared before the Court to argue the case. The Court only heard argument from the federal prosecutor. In its ruling, the Court overturned the trial court and upheld the NFA.[29]

text: Second half of 20th century[edit]

text: The Gun Control Act of 1968 (GCA) was passed after the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy, and African-American activists Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s.[1] The GCA focuses on regulating interstate commerce in firearms by generally prohibiting interstate firearms transfers except among licensed manufacturers, dealers, and importers. It also prohibits selling firearms to certain categories of individuals defined as "prohibited persons."

text: The murder of musician John Lennon in 1980 and an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981 led to enactment of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (Brady Law) in 1993 which established the national background check system to prevent certain restricted individuals from owning, purchasing, or transporting firearms.[30] In an article supporting passage of such a law, retired chief justice Warren E. Burger wrote:

text: Americans also have a right to defend their homes, and we need not challenge that. Nor does anyone seriously question that the Constitution protects the right of hunters to own and keep sporting guns for hunting game any more than anyone would challenge the right to own and keep fishing rods and other equipment for fishing – or to own automobiles. To 'keep and bear arms' for hunting today is essentially a recreational activity and not an imperative of survival, as it was 200 years ago. 'Saturday night specials' and machine guns are not recreational weapons and surely are as much in need of regulation as motor vehicles.[31]

text: In 1986, Congress passed the Firearm Owners Protection Act.[32] It was supported by the National Rifle Association and individual gun rights advocates because it reversed many of the provisions of the GCA and protected gun owners' rights. It also banned ownership of unregistered fully automatic rifles and civilian purchase or sale of any such firearm made from that date forward.[33][34]

text: A Stockton, California, schoolyard shooting in 1989 led to passage of the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1994 (AWB or AWB 1994), which defined and banned the manufacture and transfer of "semiautomatic assault weapons" and "large capacity ammunition feeding devices."[35]

text: According to journalist Chip Berlet, concerns about gun control laws along with outrage over two high profile incidents involving the ATF (Ruby Ridge in 1992 and the Waco siege in 1993) mobilized the militia movement of citizens who feared that the federal government would begin to confiscate firearms.[36][37]

text: Though gun control is not strictly a partisan issue, there is generally more support for gun control legislation in the Democratic Party than in the Republican Party.[38] The Libertarian Party, whose campaign platforms favor limited government, is outspokenly against gun control.[39]

text: Advocacy groups[edit]

text: The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded to promote firearm competency in 1871. The NRA supported the NFA and, ultimately, the GCA.[40] After the GCA, more strident groups, such as the Gun Owners of America (GOA), began to advocate for gun rights.[41] According to the GOA, it was founded in 1975 when "the radical left introduced legislation to ban all handguns in California."[42] The GOA and other national groups like the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO), and the Second Amendment Sisters (SAS), often take stronger stances than the NRA and criticize its history of support for some firearms legislation, such as GCA. These groups believe any compromise leads to greater restrictions.[43]:368[44]:172

text: According to the authors of The Changing Politics of Gun Control (1998), in the late 1970s, the NRA changed its activities to incorporate political advocacy.[45] Despite the impact on the volatility of membership, the politicization of the NRA has been consistent and the NRA-Political Victory Fund ranked as "one of the biggest spenders in congressional elections" as of 1998.[45] According to the authors of The Gun Debate (2014), the NRA taking the lead on politics serves the gun industry's profitability. In particular when gun owners respond to fears of gun confiscation with increased purchases and by helping to isolate the industry from the misuse of its products used in shooting incidents.[46]

text: The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence began in 1974 as Handgun Control Inc. (HCI). Soon after, it formed a partnership with another fledgling group called the National Coalition to Ban Handguns (NCBH) - later known as the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV). The partnership did not last, as NCBH generally took a tougher stand on gun regulation than HCI.[47]:186 In the wake of the 1980 murder of John Lennon, HCI saw an increase of interest and fund raising and contributed $75,000 to congressional campaigns. Following the Reagan assassination attempt and the resultant injury of James Brady, Sarah Brady joined the board of HCI in 1985. HCI was renamed in 2001 to Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.[48]

text: Centers for Disease Control (CDC) restriction[edit]

text: In 1996, Congress added language to the relevant appropriations bill which required "none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control."[49] This language was added to prevent the funding of research by the CDC that gun rights supporters considered politically motivated and intended to bring about further gun control legislation. In particular, the NRA and other gun rights proponents objected to work supported by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, then run by Mark L. Rosenberg, including research authored by Arthur Kellermann.[50][51][52]

text: 21st century[edit]

text: In October 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a report on the effectiveness of gun violence prevention strategies that concluded "Evidence was insufficient to determine the effectiveness of any of these laws."[53]:14 A similar survey of firearms research by the National Academy of Sciences arrived at nearly identical conclusions in 2004.[54] In September of that year, the Assault Weapons Ban expired due to a sunset provision. Efforts by gun control advocates to renew the ban failed, as did attempts to replace it after it became defunct.

text: The NRA opposed bans on handguns in Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Francisco, while supporting the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007 (also known as the School Safety And Law Enforcement Improvement Act), which strengthened requirements for background checks for firearm purchases.[55] The GOA took issue with a portion of the bill, which they termed the "Veterans' Disarmament Act."[56]

text: Besides the GOA, other national gun rights groups continue to take a stronger stance than the NRA. These groups include the Second Amendment Sisters, Second Amendment Foundation, Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, and the Pink Pistols. New groups have also arisen, such as the Students for Concealed Carry, which grew largely out of safety-issues resulting from the creation of gun-free zones that were legislatively mandated amidst a response to widely publicized school shootings.

text: In 2001, in United States v. Emerson, the Fifth Circuit became the first federal appeals court to recognize an individual's right to own guns. In 2007, in Parker v. District of Columbia, the D.C. Circuit became the first federal appeals court to strike down a gun control law on Second Amendment grounds.[57]

text: Smart guns[edit]

text: Smart guns only fire when in the hands of the owner, a feature gun safety advocates say eliminates accidental firings by children, and the risk of hostile persons (such as prisoners, criminal suspects, an opponent in a fight, or an enemy soldier) grabbing the gun and using it against the owner. Gun rights advocates fear mandatory smart gun technology will make it more difficult to fire a gun when needed.

text: Smith & Wesson reached a settlement in 2000 with the administration of President Bill Clinton, which included a provision for the company to develop a smart gun. A consumer boycott organized by the NRA and NSSF nearly drove the company out of business and forced it to drop its smart gun plans.[58][59]

text: The New Jersey Childproof Handgun Law of 2002 requires that 30 months after "personalized handguns are available" anywhere in the United States, only smart guns may be sold in the state.[60] Some gun safety advocates worry that by raising the stakes of introducing the technology, this law contributes to opposition that has prevented smart guns from being sold anywhere in the United States despite availability in other countries.

text: In 2014, a Maryland gun dealer dropped plans to sell the first smart gun in the United States after receiving complaints and even death threats.[61]

text: District of Columbia v. Heller[edit]

text: In June 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court upheld by a 5-4 vote the Parker decision striking down the D.C. gun law. Heller ruled that Americans have an individual right to possess firearms, irrespective of membership in a militia, "for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home."[62] However, in delivering the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia made it clear that, like other rights, the right to bear arms is limited. He wrote:

text: Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those “in common use at the time.”...We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.”[63][64]

text: The four dissenting justices said that the majority had broken established precedent on the Second Amendment,[65] and took the position that the Amendment refers to an individual right, but in the context of militia service.[66][67][68][69]

text: McDonald v. City of Chicago[edit]

text: In June 2010, a Chicago law that banned handguns was struck down. The ruling stated that "The Fourteenth Amendment makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms fully applicable to the States."

text: Advocacy groups, PACs, and lobbying[edit]

text: One way advocacy groups influence politics is through "outside spending," using political action committees (PACs) and 501(c)(4) organizations.[70] PACs and 501(c)(4)s raise and spend money to affect elections.[71][72] PACs pool campaign contributions from members and donate those funds to candidates for political office.[73] Super PACs, created in 2010, are prohibited from making direct contributions to candidates or parties, but influence races by running ads for or against specific candidates.[74] Both gun control and gun rights advocates use these types of organizations.

text: The NRA's Political Victory Fund super PAC spent $11.2 million in the 2012 election cycle,[75] and as of April 2014, it had raised $13.7 million for 2014 elections.[76] Michael Bloomberg's gun-control super PAC, Independence USA, spent $8.3 million in 2012[77][78] and $6.3 million in 2013.[79] Americans for Responsible Solutions, another gun-control super PAC started by retired Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, raised $12 million in 2013,[80] and plans to raise $16 to $20 million by the 2014 elections.[81] The group's treasurer said that the funds would be enough to compete with the NRA "on an even-keel basis."[81]

text: Another way advocacy groups influence politics is through lobbying; some groups use lobbying firms, while others employ in-house lobbyists. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, gun politics groups with the most lobbyists in 2013 were: the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA); Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG); the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF); and the Brady Campaign.[82] Gun rights groups spent over $15.1 million lobbying in Washington D.C. in 2013, with the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) spending $6.7 million, and the NRA spending $3.4 million.[83] Gun control groups spent $2.2 million, with MAIG spending $1.7 million, and the Brady Campaign spending $250,000 in the same period.[84]

text: 3D printed firearms[edit]

text: In August 2012, an open source group called Defense Distributed launched a project to design and release a blueprint for a handgun that could be downloaded from the Internet and manufactured using a 3-D printer.[85][86] In May 2013, the group made public the STL files for the world's first fully 3D printable gun, the Liberator .380 single shot pistol.[87][88][89]

text: Proposals made by Obama Administration[edit]

text: On January 16, 2013, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and other mass shootings, President Barack Obama announced a plan for reducing gun violence in four parts: closing background check loopholes; banning assault weapons and large capacity magazines; making schools safer; and increasing access to mental health services.[90][91]:2 The plan included proposals for new laws to be passed by Congress, and a series of executive actions not requiring Congressional approval.[90][92][93] No new federal gun control legislation was passed as a result of these proposals.[94] President Obama later stated in a 2015 interview with the BBC that gun control:

text: Executive actions taken by the Obama Administration[edit]

text: The executive actions included:

text:
Improve the data used for the background check system for gun sales;
Direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research gun violence;[96]
Provide incentives for schools to hire school resource officers;
Give law enforcement additional tools to prevent and prosecute gun crime.

text: In 2016, Obama called for a "sense of urgency" against gun violence[97] and made several changes to gun control enforcement,[98][99] including:

text:
requiring a license and background check conduction for all gun distributors (cf. gun show loophole);
extend background checks for guns purchased via a trust or corporation;
extend data available for background checks and improve response time (to close the Charleston loophole).[100]

text: 2013 United Nations Arms Treaty[edit]

text: The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is a multilateral treaty that regulates the international trade in conventional weapons, which entered into force on December 24, 2014.[101] Work on the treaty commenced in 2006 with negotiations for its content conducted at a global conference under the auspices of the United Nations from July 2–27, 2012, in New York.[102] As it was not possible to reach an agreement on a final text at that time, a new meeting for the conference was scheduled for March 18–28, 2013.[103] On April 2, 2013, the UN General Assembly adopted the ATT.[104][105] The treaty was opened for signing on June 3, 2013 and by August 15, 2015 it had been signed by 130 states and ratified or acceded to by 72. It entered into force on December 24, 2014 after it was ratified and acceded to by 50 states.[106]

text: On September 25, 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry signed the ATT on behalf of the Obama administration. This was a reversal of the position of the Bush administration which had chosen not to participate in the treaty negotiations. Then in October a bipartisan group of 50 Senators and 181 Representatives released concurrent letters to President Barack Obama pledging their opposition to ratification of the ATT. The group is led by Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) and Representatives Mike Kelly (R-Pennsylvania) and Collin Peterson (D-Minnesota). Following these two letters, four Democrat Senators sent a separate letter to the President stating that "because of unaddressed concerns that this Treaty's obligations could undermine our nation's sovereignty and the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans [they] would oppose the Treaty if it were to come before the U.S. Senate." The four Senators are Jon Tester (D-Montana), Max Baucus (D-Montana), Heidi Heitkamp (D-North Dakota), and Joe Donnelly (D-Indiana).[107][108]

text: Supporters of the treaty claim that the treaty is needed to help protect millions around the globe in danger of human rights abuses. Frank Jannuzi of Amnesty International USA states, "This treaty says that nations must not export arms and ammunition where there is an 'overriding risk' that they will be used to commit serious human rights violations. It will help keep arms out of the hands of the wrong people: those responsible for upwards of 1,500 deaths worldwide every day."[109] Secretary Kerry was quoted as saying that his signature would "help deter the transfer of conventional weapons used to carry out the world's worst crimes."[110] As of December 2013, the U.S. has not ratified or acceded to the treaty.

text: Public opinion[edit]

text: Polls[edit]

text: Huffington Post reported in September 2013 that 48% of Americans said gun laws should be made more strict, while 16% said they should be made less strict and 29% said there should be no change.[111] Similarly, a Gallup poll found that support for stricter gun laws has fallen from 58% after the Newtown shooting, to 49% in September 2013.[111] Both the Huffington Post poll and the Gallup poll were conducted after the Washington Navy Yard shooting.[111] Meanwhile, the Huffington Post poll found that 40% of Americans believe stricter gun laws would prevent future mass shootings, while 52% said changing things would not make a difference.[111] The same poll also found that 57% of Americans think better mental health care is more likely to prevent future mass shootings than stricter gun laws, while 29% said the opposite.[111] A 2016 poll found that 41% of Americans incorrectly believed universal background checks were already required by federal law, 47% recognized that background checks are only required for some gun purchases, and 12% incorrectly believed that federal law does not require background checks on any gun purchases. The same poll found that 74% of Americans who thought that America already required universal background checks supported stricter gun laws, but 89% of those who thought that such checks were not universally required supported stricter laws.[112]

text: In a 2015 study conducted by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, state gun laws were examined based on various policy approaches, and were scored on grade-based and ranked scales.[113] States were rated positively for having passed stricter measures and stronger gun laws. Positive points were also given for states that required background checks on all firearm sales and limit bulk firearms purchases, prohibiting sales of assault weapons and large capacity magazines, stricter evaluation on applications when issuing a handgun concealed carry license especially prohibited domestic violence offenders. Points were deducted from states with laws that expanded access to guns, allowed concealed carry in public areas particularly schools and bars without a permit or passed “Stand Your Ground Laws” — which remove the duty to retreat and allow people to shoot potential assailants. Eventually, states were graded indicating the overall strengths or weakness of gun laws. Ten States with the strongest gun laws ranked from strongest starting with California, then New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, New York, Maryland, Illinois, Rhode Island and finally Michigan. The states with weakest gun laws were ranked as follow: South Dakota, Arizona, Mississippi, Vermont, Louisiana, Montana, Wyoming, Kentucky, Kansas, and Oklahoma. A comparable study of state laws was also conducted in 2016.[114] Based on these findings, The Law Center concluded that comprehensive gun laws reduce gun violence deaths, whereas weaker guns laws increase gun-related deaths. Furthermore, among different kinds of legislation, universal background checks were the most effective at reducing gun-related deaths.[115]

text: Gallup poll[edit]

text: The Gallup organization regularly polls Americans on their views on guns. On December 22, 2012:[116]

text:
44% supported a ban on "semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles."
92% supported background checks on all gun-show gun sales.
62% supported a ban on "high-capacity ammunition magazines that can contain more than 10 rounds."

text: On April 25, 2013:[117]

text:
56% supported reinstating and strengthening the assault weapons ban of 1994.
83% supported requiring background checks for all gun purchases.
51% supported limiting the sale of ammunition magazines to those with 10 rounds or less.

text: On October 6, 2013:[118]

text:
49% felt that gun laws should be more strict.
74% opposed civilian handgun bans.
37% said they had a gun in their home.
27% said they personally owned a gun.
60% of gun owners have guns for personal safety/protection, 36% for hunting, 13% for recreation/sport, 8% for target shooting, 5% as a Second Amendment right.

text: In January 2014:[119]

text:
40% are satisfied with the current state of gun laws, 55% are dissatisfied
31% want stricter control, 16% want less strict laws

text: On October 19, 2015:[120]

text:
55% said the law on sales of firearms should be more strict, 33% kept as they are, 11% less strict

this was sharply polarised by party, with 77% of Democrat supporters wanting stricter laws, against 27% of Republicans

72% continued to oppose civilian handgun bans.

text: National Rifle Association[edit]

text: A member poll conducted for the NRA between January 13 and 14, 2013 found:[121]

text:
90.7% of members favor "Reforming our mental health laws to help keep firearms out of the hands of people with mental illness." (A majority of 86.4% believe that strengthening laws this way would be more effective at preventing mass murders than banning semi-automatic rifles.)
92.2% of NRA members oppose gun confiscation via mandatory buy-back laws.
88.5% oppose banning semi-automatic firearms, firearms that load a new cartridge automatically when discharged.
92.6% oppose a law requiring gun owners to register with the federal government.
92.0% oppose a federal law banning the sale of firearms between private citizens.
82.3% of members are in favor of a program that would place armed security professionals in every school.
72.5% agreed that President Obama's ultimate goal is the confiscation of many firearms that are currently legal.

text: Place of living of respondents:

text:
35.4% A rural area
26.4% A small town
22.9% A suburban area
14.7% An urban area or city

text: Regional Break:

text:
36.1% South
24.1% Mid-West
21.5% West
18.3% North-East / Mid-Atlantic

text: Political arguments[edit]

text: Rights-based arguments[edit]

text: Rights-based arguments involve the most fundamental question about gun control: to what degree the government has the authority to regulate guns.

text: Fundamental right[edit]

text: The primary author of the United States Bill of Rights, James Madison, considered them — including a right to keep and bear arms — to be "fundamental." In 1788, he wrote: "The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with the national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion."[122][123]

text: The view that gun ownership is a fundamental right was affirmed by the U.S. Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). The Court stated: "By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects."[124] The Court observed that the English Bill of Rights of 1689 had listed a right to arms as one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen. However, it should be noted that human rights law neither recognizes a right to firearms nor a human right to self-defense, but requires states instead to reasonably regulate and restrict the possession and use of firearms to protect the right to life.[125]

text: When the Court interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment in McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010), it looked to the year 1868, when the amendment was ratified, and said that most states had provisions in their constitutions explicitly protecting this right. The Court concluded: "It is clear that the Framers and ratifiers of the Fourteenth Amendment counted the right to keep and bear arms among those fundamental rights necessary to our system of ordered liberty."[126][127]

text: Second Amendment rights[edit]

text: The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted on December 15, 1791, states:

text: 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.[128]

text: Prior to District of Columbia v. Heller, in the absence of a clear court ruling, there was debate about whether or not the Second Amendment included an individual right.[129] In Heller, the Court concluded that there is indeed such a right, but not an unlimited one.[129] Although the decision was not unanimous, all justices endorsed an individual right viewpoint, but differed on the scope of that right.[66][67]

text: Before Heller gun rights advocates argued that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns. They stated that the phrase "the people" in that amendment applies to individuals rather than an organized collective, and that the phrase "the people" means the same thing in the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 9th, and 10th Amendments.[130]:55–87[131][132] They also said the Second's placement in the Bill of Rights defines it as an individual right.[133][134] As part of the Heller decision, the majority endorsed the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual, not unlimited, right to own guns. Political scientist Robert Spitzer and Supreme Court law clerk Gregory P. Magarian argued that this final decision by the Supreme Court was a misinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution.[135][136][137]

text: After the Heller decision there was an increased amount of attention on whether or not the Second Amendment applies to the states. In 2010 in the case of McDonald v. City Chicago, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment's provisions do apply to the states as a result of the Fourteenth Amendment.

text: Defense of self and state[edit]

text: The eighteenth-century English jurist William Blackstone (b. 1723), whose writings influenced the drafters of the U.S. Constitution,[138] called self-defense "the primary law of nature" which (he said) man-made law cannot take away.[139] Following Blackstone, the American jurist St. George Tucker (b. 1752) wrote that "the right of self-defense is the first law of nature; in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible."[140]

text: In both Heller (2008) and McDonald (2010) the Supreme Court deemed that the right of self-defense is at least partly protected by the United States Constitution. The court left details of that protection to be worked out in future court cases.[141]

text: The two primary interest groups regarding this issue are the Brady Campaign and the National Rifle Association.[142] They have clashed, for example, regarding stand-your-ground laws which give individuals a legal right to use guns for defending themselves without any duty to retreat from a dangerous situation.[143] After the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Heller, the Brady Campaign indicated that it would seek reasonable gun laws "without infringing on the right of law-abiding persons to possess guns for self-defense."[144]

text: Security against tyranny[edit]

text: Another fundamental political argument associated with the right to keep and bear arms is that banning or even regulating gun ownership makes government tyranny more likely.[145] A January 2013 Rasmussen Reports poll indicated that 65 percent of Americans believe the purpose of the Second Amendment is to "ensure that people are able to protect themselves from tyranny."[146] A Gallup poll in October 2013 showed that 60 percent of American gun owners mention "personal safety/protection" as a reason for owning them, and 5 percent mention a "Second Amendment right," among other reasons.[147] The anti-tyranny argument extends back to the days of colonial America and earlier in Great Britain.[148]

text: Various gun rights advocates and organizations, such as former governor Mike Huckabee,[149] former Congressman Ron Paul,[150] and Gun Owners of America,[9] say that an armed citizenry is the population's last line of defense against tyranny by their own government. This belief was also familiar at the time the Constitution was written.[151][152] A right of revolution was omitted from the Constitution, and instead the Constitution was designed to ensure a government deriving its power from the consent of the governed.[153]

text: Gun rights advocates such as Stephen Halbrook and Wayne LaPierre support the "Nazi gun control" theory. The theory states that gun regulations enforced by the Third Reich rendered victims of the Holocaust weak, and that more effective resistance to oppression would have been possible if they had been better armed.[154]:484[155]:87–8,167–8 Other authoritarian regimes gun laws have also been brought up. This counterfactual history theory is not supported by mainstream scholarship,[156]:412,414[157]:671,677[158]:728 though it is an element of a "security against tyranny" argument in U.S. politics.[159]

text: The Declaration of Independence mentions "the Right of the People to alter or to abolish" the government, and Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address reiterated the "revolutionary right" of the people.[160] In 1957, the legal scholar Roscoe Pound expressed a different view:[161][162] He stated, "A legal right of the citizen to wage war on the government is something that cannot be admitted. ... In the urban industrial society of today a general right to bear efficient arms so as to be enabled to resist oppression by the government would mean that gangs could exercise an extra-legal rule which would defeat the whole Bill of Rights."

text: Historian Don Higginbotham wrote that the well-regulated militia protected by the Second Amendment was more likely to put down rebellions than participate in them.[163] American gun rights activist Larry Pratt says that the anti-tyranny argument for gun rights is supported by successful efforts in Guatemala and the Philippines to arm ordinary citizens against communist insurgency in the 1980s.[164][165] Gun-rights advocacy groups argue that the only way to enforce democracy is through having the means of resistance.[130]:55–87[131][132] Militia-movement groups cite the Battle of Athens (Tennessee, 1946) as an example of citizens who "[used] armed force to support the Rule of Law" in what they said was a rigged county election.[166] Then-senator John F. Kennedy wrote in 1960 that, "it is extremely unlikely that the fears of governmental tyranny which gave rise to the Second Amendment will ever be a major danger to our nation...."[167] However, there is scant empirical evidence that firearms proliferation and the maintenance of democratic institutions are positively related; instead, institutions to protect human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law and also socioeconomic rights have been proven to be far more important factors in preventing military coups or other threats to democracy.[168]

text: Public policy arguments[edit]

text: Public policy arguments are based on the idea that the central purpose of government is to establish and maintain order. This is done through public policy, which Blackstone defined as "the due regulation and domestic order of the kingdom, whereby the inhabitants of the State, like members of a well-governed family, are bound to conform their general behavior to the rules of propriety, good neighborhood, and good manners, and to be decent, industrious, and inoffensive in their respective stations."[1]:2–3

text: Gun violence debate[edit]

text: The public policy debates about gun violence include discussions about firearms deaths – including homicide, suicide, and unintentional deaths – as well as the impact of gun ownership, criminal and legal, on gun violence outcomes. After the tragedy of Sandy Hook, the majority of people, including gun owners and non-gun owners, wanted the government to spend more money in order to improve mental health screening and treatment, to deter gun violence in America.In the United States in 2009 there were 3.0 recorded intentional homicides committed with a firearm per 100,000 inhabitants. The U.S. ranks 28 in the world for gun homicides per capita.[169] A U.S. male aged 15–24 is 70 times more likely to be killed with a gun than their counterpart in the eight (G-8) largest industrialized nations in the world (United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Italy, Russia).[170] In 2015, there were 33,636 deaths due to firearms, and some claim as many as 372 mass shootings, in the U.S, while guns were used to kill about 50 people in the U.K.[170] However, using the FBI definition of a "mass shooting" there were only 4 in the U.S. in 2015.[171] More people are typically killed with guns in the U.S. in a day (about 85) than in the U.K. in a year.[170]

text: Within the gun politics debate, gun control and gun rights advocates disagree over the role that guns play in crime. Gun control advocates concerned about high levels of gun violence in the United States look to restrictions on gun ownership as a way to stem the violence and say that increased gun ownership leads to higher levels of crime, suicide and other negative outcomes.[172][173] Gun rights groups say that a well-armed civilian populace prevents crime and that making civilian ownership of firearms illegal would increase the crime rate by making civilians vulnerable to criminal activity.[174][175] They say that more civilians defend themselves with a gun every year than the law enforcement arrest for violent crimes and burglary[176] and that civilians legally shoot almost as many criminals as law enforcement officers do.[177]

text: Studies using FBI data and Police Reports of the incidents, have found that there are approximately 1,500 verified instances of firearms used in self-defense annually in the United States.[178] Survey-based research derived from data gathered by the National Crime Victimization Survey has generated estimates that, out of roughly 5.5 million violent crime victims in the U.S. annually approximately 1.1 percent, or 55,000 used a firearm in self-defense (175,000 for the 3-year period.) [179] When including property crimes, of the 15.5 million victims of property crimes annually found in the survey (46.5 million for 2013-2015), the NCV survey data yielded estimates that around 0.2 percent of property crime victims, or 36,000 annually (109,000 for the 3-year period) used a firearm in self-defense from the loss of property.[179] Researchers working from the most recent NCVS data sets have found approximately 95,000 uses of a firearm in self-defense in the U.S. each year (284,000 for the years 2013-2015.[179] In addition, the United States has the highest rate of firearm ownership than any other nation. Despite this the United States has seen its gun homicide rate decline since the 1990s. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/12/03/weve-had-a-massive-decline-in-gun-violence-in-the-united-states-heres-why/

text: Criminal violence[edit]

text: There is an open debate regarding a causal connection (or the lack of one) between gun control and its effect on gun violence and other crimes. The numbers of lives saved or lost by gun ownership is debated by criminologists. Research difficulties include the difficulty of accounting accurately for confrontations in which no shots are fired and jurisdictional differences in the definition of "crime." Furthermore,

text: Such research is also subject to a more fundamental difficulty affecting all research in this field: the effectiveness of the Criminal Law in preventing crime in general or in specific cases is inherently and notoriously difficult to prove and measure, and thus issues in establishing a causal link between gun control or particular gun control policies and violent crime must be understood to be an aspect of a more general empirical difficulty, which pervades the fields of Criminology and Law at large. It is not simple, for example, to prove a causal connection between the laws against murder and the prevailing murder rates, either. Consequently, this general background must be appreciated when discussing the causal and empirical issues here.

text: A study published in The American Journal of Economics and Sociology in 1997 concluded that the amount of gun related crime and deaths is affected more by the state of the area in terms of unemployment, alcohol problems and drug problems instead of the laws and regulations.[180] This study analysed statistics gathered on the amount of gun crime in states with strict and lenient gun policies and determined that the amount of gun crime is related to how run down economically an area is.

text: A 2003 CDC study determined "The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes."[53] They go on to state "a finding of insufficient evidence to determine effectiveness should not be interpreted as evidence of ineffectiveness but rather as an indicator that additional research is needed before an intervention can be evaluated for its effectiveness."

text: In 2009, the Public Health Law Research program,[181] an independent organization, published several evidence briefs summarizing the research assessing the effect of a specific law or policy on public health, that concern the effectiveness of various laws related to gun safety. Among their findings:

text:
There is not enough evidence to establish the effectiveness of "shall issue" laws, as distinct from "may issue" laws, as a public health intervention to reduce violent crime.[182]
There is insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of waiting period laws as public health interventions aimed at preventing gun-related violence and suicide.[183]
Although child access prevention laws may represent a promising intervention for reducing gun-related morbidity and mortality among children, there is currently insufficient evidence to validate their effectiveness as a public health intervention aimed at reducing gun-related harms.[184]
There is insufficient evidence to establish the effectiveness of such bans as public health interventions aimed at reducing gun-related harms.[185]
There is insufficient evidence to validate the effectiveness of firearm licensing and registration requirements as legal interventions aimed a reducing fire-arm related harms.[186]

text: Homicide[edit]

text: With 5% of the world's population, U.S. residents own roughly 50% of the world's civilian-owned firearms. In addition, up to 48% of households within America have guns.[188] According to the UNODC, 60% of U.S. homicides in 2009 were perpetrated using a firearm.[189] U.S. homicide rates vary widely from state to state. In 2014, the lowest homicide rates were in New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Vermont (each 0.0 per 100,000 people), and the highest were in Louisiana (11.7) and Mississippi (11.4).[190]

text: Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, and his colleague Marc Gertz, published a study in 1995 estimating that approximately 2.5 million American adults used their gun in self-defense annually. The incidents that Kleck extrapolated based on his questionnaire results generally did not involve the firing of the gun, and he estimates that as many as 1.9 million of those instances involved a handgun.[191]:164 These studies have been subject to criticism on a number of methodological and logical grounds.[192]

text: Another study from the same period, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), estimated 65,000 DGUs (Defensive gun use) annually. The NCVS survey differed from Kleck's study in that it only interviewed those who reported a threatened, attempted, or completed victimization for one of six crimes: rape, robbery, assault, burglary, non-business larceny, and motor vehicle theft. A National Research Council report said that Kleck's estimates appeared to be exaggerated and that it was almost certain that "some of what respondents designate[d] as their own self-defense would be construed as aggression by others".[193]

text: Research based on the NCVS data set largely confirms Hemenway’s earlier results, showing approximately 55,000 uses of a firearm in self-defense from a violent crime in the United States for the 3-year period of 2013-2015.[179]

text: In a review of his own research, Kleck determined that, of 41 studies half of them found a connection between gun ownership and homicide but these were usually least rigorous studies. Only six studies controlled at least six statistically significant confound variables, and none of them showed a significant positive effect. Eleven macro-level studies showed that crime rates increase gun levels (not vice versa). The reason that there is no opposite effect may be that most owners are noncriminals and that they may use guns to prevent violence.[194]

text: Commenting on the external validity of Kleck's report, David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, said: "Given the number of victims allegedly being saved with guns, it would seem natural to conclude that owning a gun substantially reduces your chances of being murdered. Yet a careful case-control study of homicide in the home found that a gun in the home was associated with an increased rather than a reduced risk of homicide. Virtually all of this risk involved homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance."[195]:1443 Kleck however pointed out that most of the firearms used in the Kellermann study were not the same ones kept in the household by the victim.[196] Similarly in 2007 when the Permit-To-Purchase law was repealed in Missouri,2008 saw a 34% increase in the rate of firearm homicides in that year alone, and the figure continues to be higher than the figure pre-2007.[197]

text: One study found that homicide rates as a whole, especially those as a result of firearms use, are not always significantly lower in many other developed countries. Kleck wrote, "...cross-national comparisons do not provide a sound basis for assessing the impact of gun ownership levels on crime rates."[198] One study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, which found that for the year of 1998: "During the one-year study period (1998), 88,649 firearm deaths were reported. Overall firearm mortality rates are five to six times higher in high-income (HI) and upper middle-income (UMI) countries in the Americas (12.72) than in Europe (2.17) or Oceania (2.57) and 95 times higher than in Asia (0.13). The rate of firearm deaths in the United States (14.24 per 100,000) exceeds that of its economic counterparts (1.76) eightfold and that of UMI countries (9.69) by a factor of 1.5. Suicide and homicide contribute equally to total firearm deaths in the U.S., but most firearm deaths are suicides (71%) in HI countries and homicides (72%) in UMI countries."[199]

text: Suicide[edit]

text: Firearms accounted for 51.5% of U.S. suicides in 2013, and suicides account for 63% of all firearm-related deaths.[200] According to Kleck, most research has found no relationship between gun availability and suicide rates.[201] In contrast, a 2012 review by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that in the United States, the percent of suicide attempts that prove fatal is "strongly related to the availability of household firearms."[202]

text: Federal and state laws[edit]

text: The number of federal and state gun laws is unknown. A 2005 American Journal of Preventive Medicine study says 300,[203] and the NRA says 20,000, though the Washington Post fact checker says of that decades-old figure: "This 20,000 figure appears to be an ancient guesstimate that has hardened over the decades into a constantly repeated, never-questioned talking point. It could be lower, or higher, depending on who's counting what."[204]

text: Federal laws[edit]

text: Federal gun laws are enforced by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Most federal gun laws were enacted through:[205][206]

text:
National Firearms Act (1934)
Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (1968)
Gun Control Act of 1968 (1968)
Firearm Owners Protection Act (1986)
Undetectable Firearms Act (1988)
Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 (1990) (ruled unconstitutional as originally written; upheld after minor edits were made by Congress)
Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act (1993)
Federal Assault Weapons Ban (1994) (expired 2004)

text: State laws and constitutions[edit]

text: In addition to federal gun laws, all U.S. states and some local jurisdictions have imposed their own firearms restrictions. Each of the fifty states has its own laws regarding guns.

text: Forty four of the fifty US states have the right to keep and bear arms written into their state constitutions.[207] The text of these constitutional provisions vary. For example, Hawaii's constitution simply copies the text of the Second Amendment verbatim,[208] while North Carolina and South Carolina begin with the same but continue with an injunction against maintaining standing armies.[209][210] Alaska also begins with the full text of the Second Amendment, but adds that the right "shall not be denied or infringed by the State or a political subdivision of the State".[211] Rhode Island subtracts the first half of the Second Amendment, leaving only, "[t]he right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed".[212]

text: The majority of the remaining states' constitutions differ from the text of the U.S. Constitution primarily in their clarification of exactly to whom the right belongs or by the inclusion of additional, specific protections or restrictions. Seventeen states refer to the right to keep and bear arms as being an individual right, with Utah and Alaska referring to it explicitly as "[t]he individual right to keep and bear arms",[211][213] while the other fifteen refer to the right as belonging to "every citizen",[214] "all individuals",[215] "all persons",[216] or another, very similar phrase.[nb 1] In contrast are four states which make no mention whatever of an individual right or of defense of one's self as a valid basis for the right to arms. Arkansas, Massachusetts, and Tennessee all state that the right is "for the common defense",[229][230][231] while Virginia's constitution explicitly indicates that the right is derived from the need for a militia to defend the state.[232]

text: Most state constitutions enumerate one or more reasons for the keeping of arms. Twenty-four states include self-defense as a valid, protected use of arms;[nb 2] twenty-eight cite defense of the state as a proper purpose.[nb 3] Ten states extend the right to defense of home and/or property,[nb 4] five include the defense of family,[nb 5] and six add hunting and recreation.[nb 6] Idaho is uniquely specific in its provision that "[n]o law shall impose licensure, registration, or special taxation on the ownership or possession of firearms or ammunition. Nor shall any law permit the confiscation of firearms, except those actually used in the commission of a felony".[233] Fifteen state constitutions include specific restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms. Florida's constitution calls for a three-day waiting period for all modern cartridge handgun purchases, with exceptions for handgun purchases by those holding a CCW license, or for anyone who purchases a black-powder handgun.[234] Illinois prefaces the right by indicating that it is "[s]ubject...to the police power".[224] Florida and the remaining thirteen states with specific restrictions all carry a provision to the effect that the state legislature may enact laws regulating the carrying, concealing, and/or wearing of arms.[nb 7] Forty states preempt some or all local gun laws, due in part to campaigning by the NRA for such legislation.[235]