There is a persistent, pernicious, wilful misinterpretation of the U.S. Constitution floating around among those who want to wish away the Right to Bear Arms.
This explication came from a troll on Disqus whose name is being withheld just in case he's sobered up by now:
"
A sentence has a subject clause for a reason – it is the subject of the sentence. That means that it is the part of the sentence that is being discussed; with an objective clause referring back to the subject clause.
‘’A well regulated militia, (comma)….’’ IS the subject clause of the sentence. All other clauses refer back to this clause….
‘’… being the best security of a free state, (comma)’’ refers to the ‘militia’…..
‘’…, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, (comma)’’ refers back to those in the militia.
‘’,… shall not be infringed.’’ Refers to the ‘right of the people’ IN THE ‘MILITIA’
Yes, we have a right to bear arms IF you are in ‘’A well regulated militia,…”
Our founders were the most educated people in our nation at that time –
Learn their English and you will understand their intent as it was meant to be understood
"
In their English a sentence may consist of two kinds of clauses, dependent and independent. Many eighteenth century sentences contain multiple clauses of both kinds. The Second Amendment contains only one of each.
A dependent clause is one that does not form a complete, grammatical sentence all by itself. It consists of a subject (noun phrase), a predicate (verb phrase), and modifiers (adjective, adverb, or prepositional phrase(s)). It can be introduced by a word like "when" or "after" or "because," or its verb can be a participle form that would need an auxiliary verb to form a complete grammatical sentence.
We don't say or write sentences like
*The term papers written.
*He having washed the dishes.
*She being the eldest.
We do say or write sentences like
"The term papers written, they began cramming for the final exams."
"He having washed the dishes, she began cleaning the kitchen."
"She, being the eldest, inherited the house."
(We don't usually write "she" twice in sentences like "She, being the eldest, inherited the house," but many people say "She being the eldest, she inherited the house.")
The second half of each sentence can stand on its own:
"They began cramming for the final exams."
"She began cleaning the kitchen."
"She inherited the house."
Thus the first clause in each sentence is dependent, while the second clause is independent. Despite coming first, the dependent clause is regarded as modifying the independent clause, which is considered the important part of the sentence.
"Being" is a word that indicates a dependent clause. In some dialects of English it's more common than in others to use "being" as one of those words that announce a dependent clause:
"Being that it was a holiday, the bank was closed."
"Being a good scholar, she spelled it."
"I wouldn't call Fred a friend, him being a boy."
The second example comes from a song that's been traced back even further than the eighteenth century, showing that "being" was commonly understood to be part of a dependent clause at this period. (The framers of the Constitution were educated gentlemen and didn't have to limit themselves to phrasing that was commonly used, but on the whole they did.)
So we have the Second Amendment as it stands:
"A well regulated militia being the best security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."
"Being" is the verb in the dependent clause. "Shall not be" is an independent verb phrase and identifies the independent clause. The first half of this sentence modifies the second half.
A moment's consideration of U.S. history shows why this historic sentence was written the way it is. In the 1770s many of the revolutionary colonists lived in towns that did have well regulated militias that drilled and practiced fighting in formations, as in old England, and wore uniforms that made it easy to see who was where. Many more were "frontiersmen" living on what was then the almost lawless borderland later known as the western parts of the Eastern States--not even Ohio and Kentucky, yet, so much as wilderness areas like Roanoke, Bennington, and Hagerstown, where people were still hunting bears and fighting Native raiding parties. Those people never went out without their firearms. When the men mustered to the call to fend off "disciplinary" attacks by the British army, they came in their shrunk-to-fit leather and fur "woods" clothes and fought in their bear-hunting style, stalking their quarry, hiding behind trees, blending into the landscape. Their rifles were regarded as light arms compared with muskets and cannon. And it's well documented that these unregulated warriors, fighting as individuals and small groups, won the war. The British expected to beat the local armies by force of numbers, and they did. The "Yankee Doodles" and "frontiersmen" then beat the British, though outnumbered and out-armed, by strategy. They did to the British what they did to bears, and soon had the British throwing down their weapons in surrender.
Here's a living historian's rendition of the Revolutionary pop song, "Riflemen of Bennington":
These people had a right to keep and bear arms that never had been infringed and, despite feeling themselves superior as more sophisticated and better educated, our Founding Fathers paid tribute to them in writing the Bill of Rights. "Frontier" Americans would continue to bear arms whether or not their communities grew big enough to form "well regulated militia."
By now, of course, the "frontier settlements" (like Bray and Estilville, Virginia) have either become towns, like Estilville, now known as Gate City, or faded into obscurity, like Bray, which is an hour or two's walk from Gate City. The well regulated militia that organized itself for local defense only was known as the National Guard, which has since been taken over by the Army and deployed to fight overseas. Those who want to organize and drill to defend only their community are usually distrusted as not being well enough regulated by the Left, though most of them seem to consist of law-abiding and well-behaved citizens.
Personally, I like the idea of an all-volunteer local militia, especially for people whose age or medical condition keeps them out of the Army but who benefit from the social aspects of learning military, first aid, and survival skills in a group with a leader who knows what he's talking about. They may or may not ever be needed to fight in a battle, but they can serve the community in other ways such as preparing to defend against natural disasters. Militia groups can, among other things, help recognize when a member of the group may be reacting badly to PTSD medication. And they can find uses for people with, e.g., astigmatism, who should not be depended on for shooting or driving, but may be excellent lookouts, medics, or messengers.
But the Constitution could not have presupposed, nor was it construed to presuppose, that all armed citizens would have the opportunity to join militia groups. Many did not. And our country gained its independence because they did not have the opportunity and could only fight like hunters, which happened to be the style of fighting our Revolutionary War needed.
Our Constitution salutes the historical reality that, without individual free-range hunters and shooters who added value to the militia groups they temporarily joined, we would not have been a nation capable of having a Constitution. Let us always remember this.
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