Janice, I didn't get a chance to vote in this poll. Would you like to reopen it for voting?
There has been a lot of controversy about whether the Second Amendment to the Constitution actually confers the right to any ordinary citizen to bear arms. Here it is:
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.
As I interpret this, the right is extended to the people, as a body, to have a militia (a well regulated one) that is armed, to protect them. In other words, our armed forces, our police, etc. Nowhere does the amendment mention individuals, and it BEGINs with a reference to the militia, so that must be pretty important to the meaning. The second clause refers to the security of a free state, so it must have been very important to the writers that the people should be and feel secure. And when a crazy person can mow you down with a machine gun anywhere, do you feel secure? No.
Janice, I didn't get a chance to vote in this poll. Would you like to reopen it for voting?
There has been a lot of controversy about whether the Second Amendment to the Constitution actually confers the right to any ordinary citizen to bear arms. Here it is:
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.
As I interpret this, the right is extended to the people, as a body, to have a militia (a well regulated one) that is armed, to protect them. In other words, our armed forces, our police, etc. Nowhere does the amendment mention individuals, and it BEGINs with a reference to the militia, so that must be pretty important to the meaning. The second clause refers to the security of a free state, so it must have been very important to the writers that the people should be and feel secure. And when a crazy person can mow you down with a machine gun anywhere, do you feel secure? No.
It is, or was. At the time the amendment was written the U.S. either had no standing army, or else it was a very, very small one (sorry, I forget exactly which was the case). The defense of the states individually and the of the nation as a whole depended on the citizen-soldier militia. Moreover, I think it was the case that before Independence most citizen-soldiers were expected to supply their own weapons, but I could be mistaken about that, or the situation might have varied from colony to colony.
That is a grammatically-challenged sentence, to say the least. The verb, when it finally comes, is in a poorly-chosen place. I can see where there would be room for interpretation.
Part--and maybe even a lot--of the trouble is that our usage of the language has evolved since the last decades of the 18th century. The sentence was probably clearer to Madison, Hamilton, Jefferson, et al., that it is to us today, unfortunately.