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

[Chris Allen Thomas]

Then again, what did they mean by "militia"? I believe in the context of which 
this was written, the Minutemen was considered a milita. Taking into 
consideration that these people were ordinary farmers and merchants, the 
boundary between "ordinary citizen" and "militia member" is quite blurred. 
These Minutemen also were not in service of the United States. It did not even 
exist at the time. Rather, they served the interest of the revolution. The 
British attempt at gun control saw "ordinary citizens" as the real danger to 
British power on the American continent. The second amendment was also in 
response to that. Finally, at the time the second amendment was written we did 
not have a standing army. Now that we do, it does call into question how the 
second amendment is to be read. However, did the framers ever intend the 
militia to be controlled completely by the government? I doubt that. Rather, I 
believe that the framers had originally intended the United States to be 
protected by its citizens--rather than the other way around. 
Chris Allen Thomas
Educational Linguistics (Ph.D. Student)
Graduate School of Education
University of Pennsylvania
My Webpage: http://dolphin.upenn.edu/~chthomas


Quoting Dennis Baron <debaron at uiuc.edu>:

> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>