Comments on Guns and Commas

Ha! That's funny... that was always how I interpreted the 2nd amendment (that you needed to be in a militia to own a gun), and I have never read about the comma controversy before. I was mainly just advocating that view to be difficult.

I got tired of debating my cold, dead hands in-laws, so just started saying that if people want to own guns they need to belong to a well-regulated militia and go to, you know, militia training for one week a month.

it would be clearer (and a much more interesting country) if they just left out the 'and' after 'keep'

This shows the hypocrisy of the conservative justices, how can you claim to look at what the actual text of the constitution says, when you just skip over half of the amendment as "filler"

There isn't any mystery or battle. The court is going to wipe their ass on "strict construction" and give individuals a right to carry guns. The Court is packed.

our government defines a militia as any male over 18.

and apparently, "well-regulated" means NOT regulated.

The cynics are going to label this an ideological and political battle (yeah I'm talking to you, vooodooo and fnarf), but interpreting this phrase is the kind of thing reasonable people should be able to disagree about without taking it personally. Adam Freedman's article is a fascinating history of punctuation, but he takes a logical leap here:

Likewise, when the justices finish diagramming the Second Amendment, they should end up with something that expresses a causal link, like: “Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” In other words, the amendment is really about protecting militias, notwithstanding the originalist arguments to the contrary.

I don't buy Freedman's "in other words" here. In his first paraphrase, the amendment still refers to "the right of the people." It's true that the purpose of the amendment appears to be protecting "the militia" (not, it should be pointed out, "militias"). But it seems reasonable to read the amendment as showing that our Founding Fathers felt the best way to do that was by preserving the right of "the people" to bear arms. If the right belongs to "the people" rather than to "militias", then it is an individual right.

If we want to read the amendment as preserving a right for the states to form "militias" (which is a pretty limited right--basically that the National Guard is constitutional?) then we have to explain why the framers didn't say "the right of the states to keep and bear Arms" or "the right of militias to keep and bear Arms". And through all this, we should keep in mind that the "militia" referred to in the Bill of Rights is probably the population of able adult men--basically everyone thought of at the time as a citizen. The founding generation saw regular citizens who happened to have muskets in their homes come to the nation's rescue as Minutemen; is it any surprise that the militia was seen as important to them?

Now none of this is to say that gun control isn't a good policy in an age where guns are cheaper and deadlier. But it seems to me that our Constitution prohibits an absolute weapons ban, and may prohibit some limited weapons bans that are quite desirable. If so, maybe we should change the Constitution. But it isn't honest to attack the other side as being partisan hacks when there is a perfectly acceptable basis for their interpretation.

Your argument is ten times subtler than Scalia's is going to be, Exile, and Scalia runs the court now.

Fnarf's right on this one - it's gonna be a slam dunk. As it should be.

The issue isn't as simple as is there an individual right or not.

You have an individual right to marry ...but not if not 18, if married already, etc. etc.

You have a right to free speech...um, except for obscenity which isn't even mentioned in the 1st A. And except for those fatal words "I do." And "Fire!" in some circumstances. Oh yeah and defamation, or in making contracts or in telling lies ....there are all kinds of regulations of the right of free speech.

So lots of individual rights are regulated conditioned and limited all kinds of ways. It's normal, in fact.

There are many states with Constitutions protecting "individual rights to bear arms" using exactly those words. That didn't stop those states' highest courts, early in the history of the USA, from uphodling legislation that banned an entire class of weapons or arms like "Bowie knives" or "revolvers."

There was a ban on any guns in town in that Wyatt Earp movie.

Not too diffrent than the DC law.

So.....the "original intent" of the individual right to bear arms didn't mean you have an unlimitable, right to bear any arms of any nature at any time, etc.

Thank God, because otherwise if the Court finds an individual right in the 2d A. then any of us could keep ....nuclear arms. And tanks. That would be the literal meaning of the 2d A.

In the DC case, hopefully if the Court finds an individual right, this will only be the start of the inquiry, as per the historical precedents, not its end.

Why hasn't any smarty-pants mentioned that D.C. is actually not technically a "free State?"

I'd like to focus on the "well-regulated" part. Why do our current regulations suck, and isn't the NRA in breach of the 2nd Amendment due to their constant infringement on every reasonable attempt to regulate?

Hmm....

Gee, if only we had some way of knowing what the DRAFTERS of the amendment meant...

If only we had some idea of how THEY actual lived their lives in the context of this amendment...

If only there were some record of if THEY confiscated guns from non-militia members and enforced gun ownership restrictions. Then maybe we might be able to figure out just what THEY meant, and they know what the amendment means...

Oh, thats right, they all owned guns and lived next door to citizens (militia and otherwise) that owned guns and never tried to confiscate them. So what ever could they have meant???

If only people actually read the Federalist Papers, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. The Supremes will, though, which is one reason why it's a slam dunk.

whatev

@10, Nobody's mentioned it because it most likely won't be relevant. If the Court incorporates the decision under the 14th Amendment - a near certainty - it won't matter.

Arguing the spirit of the law, instead of the literal text of the law is not a respectable approach in a country that purports to make no law respecting an establishment of religion, yet still recognizes Christmas as a state holiday.

Oh, and all of our other obscenely religious policies.

The issue shouldn't really be about what the second amendment means anyway. It should be about whether or not it should be repealed, based on the fact that our society is not faced with any of the same threats it faced 250 years ago. Despite being ripe for revolution.

I really couldn't care less what the "framers" intended. We need to find policies that work for us now today, clearly unregulated handgun and semi-automatic weapon sales are not making this country a safer place.

Arguments over comma placement and intent merely hide the fact that parts of the Constitution are getting archaic and need to be revised.

@14 - That girl really sucks at that! She can't be in my militia.

I'm with you, voodoo, but we've lost. It's all over. The legacy of Bush's court is just beginning, too.

Every time I hear that "they can take my guns when they pry them from of my cold, dead fingers", I always think "what an excellent idea!"

@11, the English language has changed a lot in almost 250 years. "Well-regulated," back then, meant "well-trained." The NRA does more for training than any other organization in the world. So they're operating exactly in the spirit of 2A, not against it.

@19 the best we can hope for is to replace Kennedy with a consistent liberal who will be able to shift the court closer to the pre-Alito balance

@12 we do know what the founders meant.

They didn't mean an individual right because the US Constiuttion does not say "individual right" and there are all these state constitutions that took the trouble to say "individual right" to bear arms.
Because they knew they had to say it to make it mean it.
Way back then.

And beyond that look at @9.

@17, for all practical purposes, there's no such thing as an "unregulated" gun sale in this country. Furthermore, more guns actually do make people safer: in EVERY STATE, without exception, where concealed carry has been made readily available, the crime rate has dropped, sometimes significantly.

@23 If the first half of the amendment is interpreted out, then there will be no constitutional basis for regulating sales.

And i suppose by your logic Britain should have to most gun deaths anywhere since it is virtually impossible to get a handgun.

I really hope they come down on the side of complete deregulation...alowing the ownership of machine guns tanks, etc....then we'll have a fighting chance at this dictorial state built around us,controling us.

why cant you like guns and hate the goverment and still be a progressive?

remember
the highist rates of private gun ownership arent american...but swiss

"I'm with you, voodoo, but we've lost. It's all over. The legacy of Bush's court is just beginning, too.

Every time I hear that "they can take my guns when they pry them from of my cold, dead fingers", I always think "what an excellent idea!"

because you've "lost" this battle you have a fighting chance of winning the war...buy a rifle,get trained,get militent

@25 they have an actual militia tradition, ours is merely an outlet for conspiracy nuts and the "Christian Identity" crowd

@26 so getting a bunch of guns will help us enact gun-control legislation, I like your thinking! ... no wait it makes no sense

@20, I think we can agree that most gun-toting criminals and psychos who go postal aren't NRA members, and that most NRA members take their rights & responsibilities seriously.

The problem is, the NRA's over-interpretation on individual gun rights is responsible for gaping holes in our regulation that enable whackos to go on killing sprees like at UVA. And they emasculate enforcement - like why are the 1-2% of gun shops responsible for selling the bulk of crime guns not shut down, or their owners prosecuted?

Maybe you think there should be absolutely no regulation whatsoever, but no where else in American law is there the suggestion of unlimited rights with zero responsibility. Not even in the other nine Amendments in the Bill of Rights, you dunderhead.

Gun ownership and usage are privileges, and abdicating our gun responsibilities will ultimately result in the loss of said privileges. The NRA's no-compromise stance does more to stoke the anti-gun folks than anything else, and one day if that doesn't change folks like you will have great training and no way to use it.

@26 so getting a bunch of guns will help us enact gun-control legislation, I like your thinking! ... no wait it makes no sense

if your for gun control them I'm sure your for other progressive orthodocxideals of liberty,equality and social justice....which will be crushed bt rampaging,armned right wingers unless we ourselves our armned....any socity where the only one's allowed firearms are the enforcers...the cops and the army...is a socity i dont want to live in

@ 23 - you got a link for that or something?

67% of statistics are made up on the spot

@31 -- doesn't matter whether there's a link to it or not. Even if 23's point true, it's utterly meaningless because it doesn't control for any other variable under the sun. This is exactly the kind of argument created and trotted out by folks with no understanding of the difference between correlation and causality.

Fnarf @7, not that I'm a Scalia fan, but have you read any of his decisions, the guy is an excellent persuasive writer, not that it should be a surprise, but I've found myself reading his decisions and agreeing with them up until the point I realize what the result would be, them I'm like no fucking way do I agree with this, to bad he is crazy, because if he wasn't he would have established some incredible jurisprudence while on the court...

I'm with @9. We don't have an unlimited right to bear arms of any nature at any time. We have drawn lines that say, you cannot own a shoulder-mounted grenade launcher or fully-automated machine gune. So, clearly, as a society, we're okay with making distinctions about what arms you can bear and what arms you cannot bear, as well as regulations regarding how those arms can be purchased. I just happen to think that the line should be moved so that more types of arms are banned, and that more regulations should be applied to people who purchase/own allowed arms. Because, clearly (at least to me), our current approach is not working.

Here's a link to a Language Log post on this topic. It's an interesting analysis of the comma controversy from a linguistic perspective.

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005229.html#more

if the court interprets it as the right of militia, and not "the people", could militias then form to allow for gun ownership? would that fall under a literal interpretation? could the NRA just become a militia?

There is no federally-protected Constitutional right to keep and bear commas.

While you might think that it would be covered under the First Amendment's free speech guarantee, it's pretty clear that the Founders regarded the comma not as speech, but as a speech impediment.

the commas are only a subterfuge. back in the day, commas marked pauses. the spoken language came first. look at it this way: the right to keep and bear arms was self-evident; why even put it in the bill of rights? you might as well specify you have the right to marry and reproduce, or the right to eat and then shit. but, oh yeah, if everybody's a good shot, then they can blow off the red coats' heads if they ever try to take the country back, stealthily in the dead of night.