Ratification of amendments After being officially proposed, either by Congress or a national convention of the states, a constitutional amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths (38 out of 50) of the states.

The traditional constitutional amendment process is described in Article V of the Constitution. Congress must pass a proposed amendment by a two-thirds majority vote in both the Senate and the House of Representatives and send it to the states for ratification by a vote of the state legislatures.

The Constitution was not ratified by all states until May 29, 1790, when Rhode Island finally approved the document, and the Bill of Rights was not ratified to become part of the Constitution until the end of the following year.

There are actually four different ways, but only one is widely used:

• Proposal by convention of the states, with ratification by state conventions.
• Proposal by convention of the states, with ratification by state legislatures.
• Proposal by Congress, with ratification by state conventions.

The Bill of Rights is the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution. It spells out Americans’ rights in relation to their government. It guarantees civil rights and liberties to the individual—like freedom of speech, press, and religion.

Amendments to the Constitution of the United States of America

• Amendment 1 – Religion and Expression2
• Amendment 2 – Bearing Arms.
• Amendment 3 – Quartering Soldiers.
• Amendment 4 – Search and Seizure.
• Amendment 5 – Rights of Persons.
• Amendment 6 – Rights of Accused in Criminal Prosecutions.
• Amendment 7 – Civil Trials.

A bill of rights, sometimes called a declaration of rights or a charter of rights, is a list of the most important rights to the citizens of a country. A bill of rights that is not entrenched is a normal statute law and as such can be modified or repealed by the legislature at will.

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.

In order to understand government and law, in the United States, one must understand the constitution, but if there are two provisions in the constitution which are of supreme importance, it is the Fifth and Tenth Amendments. These amendments codify maximum freedom and minimal government intervention.

Freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, and petition. You just studied 10 terms!

In its June 26 decision, a 5-4 majority of the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to keep and bear arms, and that the D.C. provisions banning handguns and requiring firearms in the home disassembled or locked violate this right.

The Tenth Amendment’s simple language—“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”—emphasizes that the inclusion of a bill of rights does not change the fundamental character of the national government.

Importantly, the Supreme Court has clearly stated that the Second Amendment does not protect assault weapons. District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 624-25, 627-28 (2008). Circuit Courts have applied Heller to uphold state and local laws banning the possession of assault weapons and/or large ammunition clips.

The second amendment says you have the right to keep and bear arms. A sword is arms. Someone in the militia might be armed with a sword or pike, thus it is legal. Check your local ordinances to see if you can carry the sword openly in public.

In recent years, background checks reveal that 20% of all firearms sold, including most rifles, are AR-15s or clones. Under Heller, they are clearly protected by the Second Amendment….The Second Amendment protects ‘weapons of war’

The Supreme Court struck down provisions of the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975 as unconstitutional, determined that handguns are “arms” for the purposes of the Second Amendment, found that the Regulations Act was an unconstitutional ban, and struck down the portion of the Regulations Act that requires all …

Today the word “arms” refers collectively to offensive or defensive weapons. The word’s meaning has changed little since it was first used seven hundred years ago. It’s definition has never restricted civilian use of military weapons, including when the Second Amendment was approved.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary defines the noun arm as “a means (as a weapon) of offense or defense; especially: firearm.” 18 Black’s Law Dictionary defines the word arms as “anything that a man wears for his defense, or takes in his hands as a weapon.”

Conventional weapons include small arms, defensive shields and light weapons, sea and land mines, as well as (non-weapons of mass destruction) bombs, shells, rockets, missiles and cluster munitions.

Arms is short for armaments which comes from the Latin term armamentum which is from the term armare which means to arm meaning to give weapons. Basically it is derived from two Latin terms meaning to give weapons or weapons. Probably because it comes from the Latin “Arma” or “Armus”.