Students will understand the meaning of the second amendment’s key words and structure.
Students will understand the role of militias in colonial life and colonial attitudes about central government power.
Students will understand the spectrum of restrictions that state, local, and federal governments have placed on gun use and ownership in U.S. history.
This activity supports the following Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
RHSS.11-12.1. Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources, connecting insights gained from specific details to an understanding of the text as a whole.
RHSS.11-12.2. Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary that makes clear the relationships among the key details and ideas.
RHSS.11-12.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including analyzing how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term over the course of a text (eg. how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10)
RHSS.11-12.5. Analyze in detail how a complex primary source is structured, including how key sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the text contribute to the whole.
Step 1. Introduce topic of Constitutional rights and gun control with a whole class discussion of these questions:
Who should be able to own a gun?
What should the criteria be for owning a gun?
What responsibilities should you have if you own a gun?
Who should decide the rules for who can own a gun?
Step 2. Project and read aloud the text of the second amendment. Discuss as a class:
What words tell you that? Who are “the people”?
What does “infringed” mean? [possible answers: intruded on; stepped on; interfered with]
What is the difference between “keeping arms” and “bearing arms”?
Step 3. Students work independently to complete the Preamble Worksheet. Lead a brief share out of students’ responses to Part II. b to insure that they understand the meaning of the preamble to the second amendment.
Step 4. Students work independently to read and complete focus questions for Background Reading on Colonial Militias and Battle of Lexington. Lead a class-wide discussion to insure students understand the role of militias in colonial life, the responsibility of white male citizens to defend their communities, and the importance of local control of militias.
Step 5. Project the three different positions on gun control. Lead a class-wide discussion to review their meaning and identify which one has the most government restriction on gun ownership and use and which has the least government restriction on gun ownership and use.
Other possible discussion questions:
Why does Position 2 mention states (states can pass their own laws; sometimes these laws are controversial and the Supreme Court must decide whether or not they are constitutional)?
In Position 3, why is an exception made for the police, military, and National Guard?
Step 6. Divide the class into six smaller groups. Assign each group one of the three positions discussed in the previous step (each position will be defended by two groups). Handout Task Instructions and Worksheet. Students will work in small groups to complete the task.
Step 7. Ask each group to summarize their position in their own words and read their slogan. Each group should also share the best reason from any of the documents that supports their position.
On July 28, 2010, Alex Pacas, 19, and Wyatt Whitebread, 14, of Mount Carroll, IL were suffocated to death, sinking into several thousand tons of quicksand-like shelled corn in the grain bin where they were working. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) quickly determined that their deaths were preventable if Haasbach, LLC, the grain elevator's owner, had followed proper safety regulations.
Such tragedies are more common than you might think. Every day, an average of 14 American workers die in work-related accidents, many of which are preventable. In addition, every year 3.3 million American workers are injured or sickened by their work conditions. As shocking as this is, these figures represent a dramatic improvement when compared to the situation before the federal Occupational Safety and Health act (OSH) was passed 40 years ago this week.
The OSH Act, signed into law by President Richard Nixon in the waning days of 1970, is a real success story. In the past four decades, the number of deaths due to workplace accidents fell from 13,800 in 1970 to 5,657 in 2007. The total incidence rate of private sector occupational injuries and illnesses plummeted from 10.9 per 100 workers in 1972 to 3.9 in 2008. The decline of blue-collar industrial jobs has certainly contributed to the falling numbers of workplace fatalities and diseases, but much of the progress is due to the tougher government standards made possible by OSHA which is now celebrating its fortieth anniversary.
This improvement was accomplished despite 40 years of attacks on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration by conservative critics and business leaders who demonize it as a harmful infringement on American free enterprise. Business lobby groups, corporate-sponsored academics, and business-side politicians use every conceivable argument in their rhetorical armament. Most vociferously, the corporate lobbyists insisted that OSHA would hurt the ability of business to operate efficiently, destroy firms, and kill jobs. A few years after the law was passed, a Chamber of Commerce pamphlet declared "This is the sorry history of OSHA - a statute which serves little useful purpose; and in its administration is even threatening the entire business system."
This year, Congressional Republicans and their industry allies carried on this ignoble tradition, successfully blocking the first significant reform of the OSH Act since its passage. The Protecting America's Workers Act and Robert Byrd Mine Safety Act would have given OSHA the tools to crack down on repeat violators and prevent many more accidents. In recent hearings over the proposed law, Jonathan Snare, representing the Coalition of Workplace Safety, a corporate front group, argued that any tightening of regulatory oversight would "create greater cost, litigation and hamper job creation." Snare continued that, "Especially during these challenging economic conditions, the adverse impact on the ability of employers to create jobs is a critical factor and should be of concern to this Committee and Congress." Snare's comment is yet another example of how corporate America cries wolf whenever reformers attempt to make business more socially responsible. Time and again, their doomsday predictions have proven false.
OSHA has been particularly effective when regulating some of our most dangerous industries, which hasn't stopped the affected employers from vigorously challenging the agency at every turn. Following a series of explosions in grain elevators in December 1977, which caused the deaths of 59 workers, OSHA began the process of developing a grain handling facilities standard that took a decade to put into effect. At the time industry was bitterly opposed. Yet, the National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA), a persistent critic of OSHA, acknowledged in 1998 that the industry had seen "an unprecedented decline in explosions, injuries and fatalities at grain handling facilities." In 2006, a review by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board reported a 42 percent decline in grain explosions, 60 percent decline in injuries, and a 70 percent decline in fatal accidents. (There are still recalcitrant employers who do not follow OSHA's guidelines, leading to tragedies like the deaths of Pacas and Whitebread.) Similarly, the passage of the Cotton Dust standard in 1978 lowered rates of "brown lung" among textile workers throughout the country from approximately 12 percent to about 1 percent of all employees.
Despite these successes, business lobby groups and their allies in Congress have hamstrung OSHA's effectiveness by thwarting tougher standards, restricting its budget, and limiting the number of inspectors. Today, state and federal OSHA agencies combined only have 2, 218 inspectors, and in every state the number of OSHA inspectors fails to meet the benchmark set by the International Labour Organization for the appropriate ratio of safety inspectors to employees.
This year's headline catching accidents at Upper Big Branch and Deepwater Horizon, and many of the less known tragedies like the deaths of two teenagers in Mount Carroll, were avoidable with stronger laws and more vigorous enforcement. Industry groups have used their significant resources to escape their responsibilities. Now, the US Chamber of Commerce and congressional Republicans are stepping up their attacks on OSHA, recycling many of the same arguments they used 40 years ago. While they claim stronger workplace protections are "job killers," the unfortunate reality is that it is American workers who are dying every day.
OSHA's 40th anniversary is both a milestone to celebrate and a call to action. The newly elected House of Representatives is threatening to defund OSHA and make workplaces more dangerous. Eric Cantor, the new House Majority Leader, has threatened to look closely at any proposed regulation that imposes "additional unnecessary costs on employers and job creators," an allusion to a coming assault on OSHA and other federal regulatory agencies. This is a frightening scenario because America needs effective protections to ensure that our citizens come home from work every night safe and healthy.
14th Amendment
Passed by Congress 13 June 1866; Ratified 9 July 1868
Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the [rights] of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law…
Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to…the whole number of persons in each State…But when the right to vote…is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced…
Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who…shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same… But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Section 4. ...[n]either the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
15th Amendment
Passed by Congress 26 February 1869; Ratified 3 February 1870
Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude—
Students will be able to identify the methods that ordinary people without voting rights used to participate in revolutionary politics.
Students will analyze the extent to which non-voting groups exerted political influence in revolutionary America. Â
As war erupted between the American colonies and Britain, and as the colonies declared their independence, great numbers of working men and women took up the patriot cause. Ordinary people helped bring about the military successes that secured independence, questioned older hierarchical assumptions, and claimed for themselves a stake in political sovereignty. Following the Revolution, Americans had to make crucial decisions about how they were now to govern themselves, how they should act in relation to one another, and who would get a say in public affairs.Â
In the years leading up to and during the Revolution, working people, including women and slaves who had few or no rights in colonial society, echoed the revolutionary rhetoric of the patriot cause. They claimed that the evolving notion of "we the people" should include people like themselves, and that the newly formed government should protect their civic and economic rights. They used various methods to participate in the politics of the era, even though they were denied many of the traditional routes—voting, serving in assemblies--for swaying political leaders and law. Many among American elites disagreed with popular conceptions of republican society, and their views shaped the U.S. Constitution that would be drafted and ratified in the late 1780s. Large groups were excluded from the aspiration for equality.
Step 1: (Optional: Lead students through the short non-document-based activity "Rights in Early America" to help them understand the extent of political rights in the 1770s and 1780s.) Tell students that the story of the American Revolution is not just about the leadership of elite white men like John Adams or George Washington. Tell students that in this activity they will be learning about how different groups in society participated in and were inspired by the American Revolution. The teacher may want to discuss with students their prior knowledge of who had what rights in colonial society. Â
Step 2: Divide students into small mixed-ability groups of 3-5 students. Assign each group one of the following groups: women, African Americans, or working-class men. Pass out the worksheets and appropriate primary sources to each group. Â Tell students to read the pair of documents, answering the questions at the top first, then answering the questions at the bottom. Â
NOTE: The materials list includes versions of documents that include literacy supports such as definitions and formatting changes to make the documents easier to read. You can find versions without reading supports by searching by title in HERB. Â
Step 3: Ask each group to summarize their documents in 1-2 sentences to share with the whole class. The teacher may also want to ask groups to share one thing that surprised them about each document. Project each document on the overhead or Smartboard and allow groups to share out their document summaries.Â
Step 4: Now ask each group to share out their response to the question: Which document supports the claim that people without political power have used non-voting methods to expand the definition of "We the People." Â Ask each group to explain their choice. Then summarize by reviewing the three methods presented in the documents: signing petitions, participating in boycotts or non-importation campaigns, and mob activity. Â
Step 5: Lead students in a discussion of the following question:
What do these documents reveal about tensions in society over the definition of "We the people"?Â