No more thoughts and prayers: evaluating constitutional routes to gun control in the United States

Olstein, Sydney

No more thoughts and prayers: evaluating constitutional routes to gun control in the United States

Citation

Olstein, S. No more thoughts and prayers: evaluating constitutional routes to gun control in the United States. 2022. handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10230/55331

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Abstract

This thesis aims to expose potential constitutional routes to gun control in the United States. Although this topic has been covered by many academics, legal scholars, lawyers, and judges before, here will be evaluated several different methods of constitutionally achieving regulation. This will include background of the issue facing the United States and how it differs from that in other areas of the world, specifically Europe due to the similarity in wealth. Further, the two battling methods of constitutional Interpretation in the United States will be thoroughly explained and discussed, one method reigning supreme. This method is also used in Europe to interpret the European Convention of Human Rights. The following section will compare the ways the living instrument doctrine works in the European context, and how it and the idea of European Consensus could be reasonably applied in an American context. From there the bipartisan viewings of the living tree doctrine will be analyzed, the common arguments of the right-wing version being refuted. Application of regulation will also be discussed as it is inspired by constitutional regulations on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, the right to Freedom of Speech. Finally, I will reveal my proposal for constitutional regulation and gun control, while explaining the roadblocks that may be faced on the way there. I conclude by acknowledging now may not be the time for implementation, despite the death toll that continues to grow; but that the United States government and courts must see the statistics for what they are and implement strict, federally regulated controls.