These may sound familiar because they are some of the laws written into the constitution that make this land of liberty so great; but have we thought about it? The answer is no; these were enshrined in a constitution more than 500 years older than ours (Hall, 109). The Magna Carta was the first set of laws ever imposed on an English king; this was done under the reign of a cruel and incompetent ruler who demanded increased taxes to continue waging war, only to find that the nobles would not grant him this privilege unless they gathered for a meeting (Hall, 109). This meeting founded the Magna Carta. About a third of the American Bill of Rights is similar to Magna Carta, but that's no coincidence. The Magna Carta was a revolutionary document intended to grant the people their freedoms and also place the king under the law; many countries found this political ideology attractive and adopted it as well. There was a lot of time between the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and they were written for different countries, so one can imagine there are a lot of differences. The most obvious would be that the United States does not have a monarchical government, so many of the same laws do not apply, but the Bill of Rights is more progressive than Magna Carta. One thing that stands out is the right to keep and bear arms. Even though it seems that our government is putting pressure