Second Amendment Debate

The articles I chose to compare and contrast were, “Scrutinizing the Second Amendment” by Adam Winkler and “Nothing to debate: Second Amendment, legal gun in my purse saved our lives” by Lynne Russell. While there was not much to compare, aside from the articles both relating to the Second Amendment, it was quite obvious that one article was strictly opinionated, while the other was a solid analysis.

In Russell’s article, she describes an event that occurred when she and her husband were traveling across the United States. They stopped at a motel for the evening and were ambushed by a deranged, armed man inside their motel room. Because her husband had two small handguns, which were concealed in the bedside table, he was able to open fire

In his introduction, Winkler lays out both sides of the Second Amendment debate, sharing strictly historical facts and suspending all personal judgement. The article is then separated into many headings and subheadings, where Winkler goes into more detail describing arguments from different point of views, i.e. “The Bill of Rights Argument”, “The Fundamental Rights Argument”, “Theories of Strict Scrutiny” and so on. This is clearly a “Move Two” as described by Writing Analytically. Winkler does a fantastic job of making the implicit, explicit. He touches on practically every aspect of the Second Amendment debate, presenting a multitudes of data, before reaching his conclusion. Also noteworthy, Winkler follows IRAC. He clearly identifies an issue, then states “this discussion here is informed by the example of state constitutional law” (Winkler 686), which would be applying standards, analyzes both sides of the debate in the meat of his article, then establishes a conclusion which is, “The history of deferential review under the reasonable regulation standard is as good an indication as any that, even if the Second Amendment is reinterpreted to protect an individual right, almost all gun control laws are likely to remain constitutional” (Winkler