Constitutional Amendment no. 2 - Right to Bear Arms
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Okay, so you know how one of the arguments against gun control of any type is the old "shall not be infringed"? For the founding fathers, that meant either bladed or blunt weapons, or firearms, which consisted of some sort of single-shot, breech-loaded device, in sizes ranging from pistols to cannons, that used gunpowder to fire projectiles, either solid or shrapnel-like. (Weapons at that time were
personal. I suspect that they might be horrified at the ease with which any one may now wipe out large numbers of people these days while barely looking at them, if it all. Probably moreso at the ease
and scale with which governments can the same.)
Now, if the Founders indeed didnt want the possession of arms to be infringed in anyway, then it is, constitutionally, pretty hard to regulate guns in this country without a constitutional amendment for the the constitutional amendment.
IF. But what if unlimited possession of arms was not what the Founders had in mind? Here's a possible position against that, supplied by
a commenter at
this article:
"It's a logical IF -- THEN statement in the Federal Law. IF well-regulated militia, THEN right to keep arms."
Having never studied logic, I'm afraid that I cannot really say whether this commenter's logic is itself sound. It seems okay to me, though, though it seems that under this interpretation, without the Militia, there is no right to bear arms, which seems unlikely. See, for me the problem is that comma after the word "arms" and before "shall". It's possible that it is a misplaced comma (though that seems unlikely in a carefully vetted, debated and reproduced document). It's certainly a badly constructed sentence by modern standards, but the way I interpret it (and I was really good a sentence diagramming once upon a time) is that the core of the sentence is "a well regulated Militia shall not be infringed" and that "being necessary to the security of a free State" pretty obviously modifies "Militia". The tricky part is that third phrase, which, because of the comma following it is kind of a fragmentary one. I'm thinking that it is modifier for "being necessary to the security of a free State". A slight rearranging will perhaps make that more clear:
A well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed.
Now, at this point, I'm going to head kind of deep into speculative territory, because one of the tricks to diagramming a convoluted sentence is to rearrange elements that have been placed out of an obvious order. In this case, I can eliminate the comma that facilitated that misorder, which means that the sentence could quite logically* read:
A well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed.
See how that works? Using my interpretation, the phrase seems pretty clear, where it is the (well-regulated) militia that is not to be infringed rather than the right to bear arms.
But why stop there? How about this: we've got four phrases, right?
a) A well regulated Militia
b) being necessary to the security of a free State
c) the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
d) shall not be infringed
Let's just rearrange them in all the various ways possible to see what makes sense:
- A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
- A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
- A well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed
- A well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, being necessary to the security of a free State
- A well regulated Militia, shall not be infringed, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
- A well regulated Militia, shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the security of a free State
- Being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, a well regulated Militia
- Being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, a well regulated Militia, shall not be infringed
- Being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed, a well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
- Being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, a well regulated Militia
- Being necessary to the security of a free State, a well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
- Being necessary to the security of a free State, a well regulated Militia, shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
- The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State
- The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, being necessary to the security of a free State, a well regulated Militia
- The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed
- The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, a well regulated Militia, shall not be infringed, being necessary to the security of a free State
- The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not be infringed, a well regulated Militia
- The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the security of a free State, a well regulated Militia, shall not be infringed
- Shall not be infringed, a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
- Shall not be infringed, a well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the security of a free State
- Shall not be infringed, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, a well regulated Militia
- Shall not be infringed, being necessary to the security of a free State, a well regulated Militia, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms
- Shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State
- Shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, being necessary to the security of a free State, a well regulated Militia
So, what have we got here?
1) This is the original amendment as passed.
2) This works if you remove "be" and a comma and the "d" from "infringed", resulting in "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, shall not infringe the right of the people to keep and bear Arms", which gives people the right to guns, but in the context of militias not infringing on the people's rights, which is a bit odd. Plus it's a bit too much manipulation, so perhaps not.
3) As noted above, this works pretty well. The arrangement implies that it is the militias that may not be infringed upon (assuming they are well-regulated, or perhaps other than to regulate them well) rather than the arms.
4) Works if you replace the comma after "militia" with an "and", implying both militia-building and people arming are equally necessary to the security of the free State. Leave the comma in while keeping the "and" and you imply that the armed people are subordinate to the regulation of the militia.
5) This will work if you take out the comma after "militia", and replace the comma after "state" with the word "and", but more as an endorsement of militias. It also makes the arms possession subordinate to the regulation of the militia.
6) If you remove the commas after "militia" and "arms", this works well to promote the idea that a people's militia is necessary for the security of the free State.
7) You can take out the comma after "arms", but this leaves "a well regulated Militia" dangling uselessly afterwards.
8) Remove the comma after "arms" and replace it with "and" and you have a statement much like gun nuts now argue. I'm not sure that the original structure really allows that, though.
9 and 10) These dont really make sense as sentences. They're more like lists.
11) Like number 8, if you remove the comma after "militia" and replace it with "and", you have a statement much like gun nuts now argue. And the original structure allows this reading.
12) This just doesnt work in this order.
13) Removing the commas after "arms" and "militia" creates a readable sentence which makes the lack of infringement in the arming of the people subject to the context of the "well-regulated" militia.
14) Just like number 7, you can take out the comma after "arms", but this leaves "a well regulated Militia" dangling uselessly afterwards.
15) Removing the comma after "militia" results in a coherent sentence which prohibits infringement of arms-bearing, but does so in the context of a militia. I suspect this may mean that anyone wishing unfettered arms access will have to belong to said militia, and so thereby subject to its regulations.
16) Structurally, if this sentence is not a poorly worded two-item list, then it defines "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" as being a well-regulated militia, which doesnt really work.
17) Just like numbers 7 and 14, you can take out the comma after "arms", but this leaves "a well regulated Militia" dangling uselessly afterwards.
18) Replacing the comma after "state" with an "and" makes a coherent sentence, making the right to bear arms a necessity. However, I'm not sure that the original structure really allows that, though it may.
19-24) All of these read like poorly worded two-item lists. Grammar this awful does not make it to the final draft. And if you would argue that the grammar used in the actual amendment is bad, I would argue that there is fashion in language as much as anything else, but said fashion has never included balky, truncated sentences, at least not until the age of texting.
Score?
I could get into the issue of just what exactly they mean by militia, but I dont have the energy or the peace and quiet right now. Perhaps later I'll revise this post. Not today. I will just say that we dont see a lot of private armies being formed around here, so I'm guessing that maybe it's been decided that those can be regulated as well.
* My own brand of logic, not the formal academic type. Perhaps "sensibly" would be a better word.
