Face The Thing That Should Not Be

"This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms.”
-President Barack Obama

The Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC opened in April 1993 to protests from extremists and Holocaust deniers. In 2002 two white supremacists plotted to blow up the museum with a bomb like the one used to destroy the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995. The assault on Wednesday and the 2002 plot were not only attacks on Jewish Americans and the Holocaust, but upon the countless school children of every nationality, race, ethnicity and religion who visit the museum at the end of their school year.

All too often in hate crimes perpetrated en masse, like Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur or hate crimes committed by members of extremist groups throughout the world have proven the adage “never again” incorrect. The promulgation of fear, stereotypes and hatred have given some the impetus to resort to violent acts against imagined enemies.

A month before the attack on the Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report that warned that domestic right-wing extremism was the most pressing domestic terrorist threat that the country faced.

Hate is extraordinarily difficult and dangerous to overcome, but peace cannot be maintained without first addressing alienation, discontent and intolerance.

Teaching with the Constitution
Remind your students to highlight and click on the text of the Constitution to read Linda Monk's commentary.

Ask your students how the Constitution allows us to address grievances without resorting to violence.

Teaching Amendment 2

Arizona has seen an increase in the number of violent crimes, including kidnappings, shootings and home invasions, which authorities attribute to the Mexican drug cartels' expansion into the United States. Mexican drug cartels have adopted a campaign of intimidation against Mexican authorities, and the deaths of police, mayors and other government officials in Mexico have become common.

A Republican lawmaker from Arizona who favors gun rights, said he was considering introducing legislation intended to restrict straw purchasers, people who buy guns with legal documentation and then turn the weapons over to drug traffickers. Though federal law prohibits such purchases, this may be a prime way Mexico’s drug cartels procure weapons from within the United States.

Gun control advocates argue that the Second Amendment was created to ensure the continuation of the state militias as a means of defense, not to ensure an individual's right to own a firearm? The Supreme Court weighed in on the debate in 2007 after Washington DC passed legislation barring the registration of handguns, requiring licenses for all pistols, and mandating that all legal firearms be kept unloaded and disassembled or trigger locked.

In District of Columbia v Heller the Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision, ruled that the Constitution protects an individual’s right to own guns, not just the right of the states to maintain regulated militias.

Teaching the Second Amendment

Your students can read and interpret the meaning of the Second Amendment by viewing the National Constitution Center’s Interactive Constitution. Your students can then consider what can be done about gun violence on a state and national level in light of the Supreme Court's ruling in District of Columbia v Heller.

Your students can also view the National Constitution Center’s Town Hall Wall about the debate over the Second Amendment. The Town Hall Wall, a format pioneered at the Center and used in the permanent exhibit, is a great way to get your students to focus on and talk about contemporary constitutional issues.

Your student can then deliberate the issue of gun control and how that issue is connected to individual rights contained in the Bill of Rights, state's rights, crime and violence.