Second Amendment grammar -- the Framers parsed it one way, but will the Supreme Court agree with their analysis?

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language --

Second Amendment grammar -- the Framers parsed it one way, but will  
the Supreme Court agree with their analysis?

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this week in a case  
that could decide whether the Second Amendment – the one about the  
right to bear arms – permits or prohibits gun control.

In 2003, Dick Heller and five other plaintiffs challenged Washington,  
D.C.’s, tough gun control law, claiming that its ban on handguns  
violated their Second Amendment right to tote a gun. Last Spring, the  
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld  
Heller’s claim. The Supreme Court then agreed to hear D.C’s appeal of  
the Heller case.

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states,

     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.

One of the points at issue in the Heller case is whether the right to  
bear arms is related directly to service in a militia, or whether  
it’s an individual right conferred on every American. Opponents of  
gun control favor an individual rights reading, ignoring or  
minimizing the militia’s presence in the Second Amendment.

But according to the grammar lessons that the Framers would have  
learned, the sentence structure of the Second Amendment binds the  
right to bear arms to service in the militia.

Want to know more about guns and grammar?  Read the rest at the Web  
of Language



DB


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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