The First Amendment is widely considered to be the most important part of the Bill of Rights. It protects the fundamental rights of conscience—the freedom to believe and express different ideas--in a variety of ways. Under the First Amendment, Americans have both the right to exercise their religion as well as to be free from government coercion to support religion.The Second Amendment is the only place in the Bill of Rights where Congress’s capacity to “regulate” appears in plain language. Our forebears clearly believed that freedom involved not only ensuring that the government would not have a monopoly on guns, but also that we would carefully regulate our weapons.
